Heavenly Brothers
by Dying Heart Alchemist
Summary: Ed and Al find out they are half angels. They gain powers and wings. They will have to keep their secret from the world cause they are afraid they would be put up on display or worse used for tests.
1. Chapter 1

**I thought of another story!**

**I am not sure if it will be any good but I will try.**

**Enjoy! (Bows and walks off stage.)**

Heavenly Brothers

Ch.1 The Beginning

It was a year and a half after their dad left and the Elric brothers were playing outside while their mom hung the clothes. The eldest brother was six while the younger one was five. Edward and Alphonse were as close as brothers could be. They shared everything, but one thing they shared was unknown to the brothers until today.

Ed had run inside to their room to get a ball him and Al could throw around. He found it under his bed. He turned around and started to run back outside. Once he got to the middle of the room he stopped as pain spread from his back to his whole body. He collapsed letting the ball role away to another part of the room to be forgotten. Ed curled up into a ball as the pain intensified. It came in waves originating at his back. As the pain subsided from his limbs, his back seemed to burn. Soon it was only at his upper back right around his shoulder blades that hurt. He let out a cry, the first one, but for some reason he had been hearing them the whole time but from far away. His first thought once he could bare the pain was it wasn't him who was crying. Al! It was Al outside. Ed tried to get up to go to his little brother to help him but he landed face down. The pain shot back up but stayed in the area in the middle of his back.

Numbness came over him as something seemed to sprout out of his back. Ed let out another cry. Then as quick as it began everything stopped, the pain and the feeling of numbness. But a strange weight on his back had appeared. He turned his head and sucked in a breath when he saw what it was. Wings… angel wings to be exact.

Ed raced through the house back to the yard where his brother and mother were. He burst out of the house but stopped dead. There mother was helping Al up of the ground. Al's face was tearstained but that wasn't what made Ed stop. Two wings identical to the ones on Ed's back were on his brother.

"M-mom?" she looked up at Ed's voice.

"Looks like both of you grew wings." She was smiling but Ed could tell she was worried.

"What's wrong mom? You look worried." Ed said while rushing to Alphonse's side.

She looked down at him in surprise. "Well," she said slowly, "I guess I have to tell with out your father's help."

Ed's face scrunched up into anger, "We don't need him." Then his face lightened up, "We have you mom. You can tell us what you want to with out him."

She smiled at him then looked around to make sure no one had seen them. Then she ushered them inside, she touched both there backs to do so and they yelped in pain. She imminently moved her hands to her side looking afraid. Once they got inside she pulled the curtains so no one could look in. Then she turned to her two boys.

"Ed, Al, I have some things to explain to you." She looked at each of them as she spoke their names.

"Are you going to tell us about why we just grew wings?" Al asked in his adorable voice.

"Yes, Al, now listen up." She gave him a smile then took a deep breath. "I was hoping when this day came you would be a little older and your dad could help me explain." Ed was about to say they didn't need there dad but their mom held up her hand to stop him.

"As I was saying this involves your dad so he would have helped." She let out her breath and continued. "Your father was an angel."

Both brothers stared at their mother not knowing what to say.

"He had come down from heaven to deal with a demon that had been steeling human souls and preventing them from going to heaven. It was just cruel to trap souls on earth and crueler for them to be in the jaws of a demon. He had been tracking it when it attacked me." Ed's and Al's eyes where full of shock and wonderment.

"Your dad saved me but let the demon get away. We fell in love so we bought a house here in Resembool. He was still tracking the demon but he always came back. After a while we had you two, but it was forbidden for an angel to have kids with a human. He didn't care he loved me and he loved you too just as much." Ed looked away and crossed his arms when his mom said their dad had loved them.

"Your dad really loved you Ed." Not missing the gesture. "He left to face the demon. After he defeated it and released the souls, he had to go back. He had to convince the higher up angles not to kill you two." Both of the boys gasped at that.

"W-why would they want to k-kill us?" It was Al who asked the question.

"You heard me say it was forbidden for angels to have kids with a human, well the higher angels had to kill the half breed angels so they won't pose a threat to heaven. You two are half angel so it was mandatory for them to send some one to kill you. Your dad sent a letter telling me that they spared your lives for your dad's wings." Ed looked at his brother at the news that they may have been killed, Al looked back tears brimming in his eyes. Ed leaned over and hugged Al, it was awkward with both their wings.

There mom continued after they let go of each other. " Your dad gave his wings so he could never return to earth. He also explained to me what he was right before he left. He told me everything that concerned you and how your bodies will act like on this day. You will be able to hide your wings in a few weeks of practicing; you will also gain some powers. Your dad didn't know what to expect but healing powers are going to be one you get for sure. You will gain others too but I have no idea what they would be." The two half angels started to feel overwhelmed.

"Mom… are we freaks now?" Ed voiced a thought.

"No Ed, you're my little angels now." She said in a sweet voice, leaning down and hugging her boys.

"Ok." Ed said in a small voice griping the back of her clothes.

"So dad left to save us?" Al said to the left of Ed. Ed shuddered at the thought, he had hated their father after he thought he had left mom and them.

"Yes Alphonse, he did." Their mom smiled letting them go.

"I knew it." Al's voice was a whisper.

There mom had told them the importance of no one finding out about their blood inheritance. People would come and take them away and put them on show or worst they would stick them in a lab and do tests on them. It was a lot for two young boys to take. They started to have nightmares about people poking them through cages. They started to try retracing their wings; after a week all that was left on there backs were three or four purely white feathers sticking out where each of their wings had been. Soon they were aloud out of the house to play with there friend, after they were reminded that they had to keep their mouths shut about their father and their new found powers.

After a few weeks they had fully mastered growing and retracting their wings so they flew around the house often. Their mother would scold them if they broke something while flying around. They yearned to fly outside but they knew they couldn't someone could see them. But one night their mom told them, actually told them, to go out side and fly. It was a warm moonless night so no one would see them flying. The dark didn't bother them because they found out a few nights after gaining their wings that they could see perfectly in the dark. They didn't even have a nightlight any more.

Flying outside was totally different from flying in the small house. The wind messed the brothers up at first but they soon found ways of using the wind to their advantage. Their mother had warned them to stay close to the ground because they didn't know if their wings would retract while they were flying. It had happened in the house a lot the first few days they were learning how to fly. There mom wouldn't let them try flying till they got their growing and retracting down and when they did, their wings still disappeared sometimes as they flew. They never got seriously hurt except for one time Ed was flying around the living room and his wings suddenly went back into his body. He had tumbled down and hit his head on the coffee table knocking him out for a few minutes.

The brothers raced and did figures in the sky till their mother called them down. This became an activity the boys did constantly. They waited for night's like that one, dark and nice weather, to go back out and fly.

Through out the years they studied alchemy from the books their dad left behind. They had learned from their mother that it was also forbidden for heaven's angels to learn alchemy but their dad had found it so interesting he just had to learn it. They advanced in alchemy fast and their mother was proud. She had found out about their hobby after they had transmuted a doll for Winry's birthday. They thought she was going to be mad but instead she was very happy they wanted to learn alchemy. She had let them into Hoenheim's old study. They got better at it and they showed their mother and Winry every accomplishment they made.

But then the unthinkable happened, Winry's parents died at war. They had found Winry crying in her kitchen with granny Pinako patting her back. Winry had screamed at them and hit Al's new creation of the table. She told them they could never feel the way she did. They knew she was right and rushed home and hugged their mom. Both had imagined losing her at Winry's words and both cried in Trisha's arms.

But soon after their mom had grown gravely ill. The doctors said that it was an illness she seems to have been fighting a long time. It was incurable. In her last minutes she had told her sons to look after each other and never give up.

At the funeral Ed cursed their dad. He was an angel wasn't he, why didn't he save her? Then after everyone left and they were free of those eyes filled with sympathy they didn't want, Ed told his brother that they were going to get her back.

They trained for a year by themselves and read through every book in the study many times. They soon realized that they needed someone else to help them, they needed a teacher.

Their chance arrived one stormy night. The villagers had been trying to put sand bags on the riverside to keep the town from flooding. Ed and Al had been doing alchemy to help but the river was rising too fast. A figure had came out of the crowd and told every one to step aside. Then she used alchemy without circles. The Elrics were so impressed they knew she had to be their teacher. But before they could run up and ask her she threw up blood, the other villagers took her to the only doctor in Resembool. The next morning when every one was thanking her the brothers ran up to her asking for an apprenticeship. She had refused them right away but they latched onto her and kept asking. She gave in once Pinako told her that they had no parents when she asked where they where. She said she would take them for a month to test them to see if they were worth training. If they passed her test then she would train them.

They packed their stuff and headed off to another little town called Dublith. As they left they reassured Winry they wouldn't be back in a month.

If only they knew.

**Well how was the first chapter?**

**Next chapter is their time with their teacher.**

**They will have to keep their secret.**

**Well have a nice day! (Falls out of chair due to heart failure.)**

**Dying Heart Alchemist **


	2. Chapter 2

**Hiya!**

**I got another chapter, yay!**

**I am currently experiencing writers block with the story 'Return'. I will try to write a chapter but may take awhile.**

**(Downs a whole can of Sprite) Enjoy!**

Heavenly Brothers

Ch. 2 Teacher

They had been on the train almost all day, the brothers were getting stiff. The sun was setting in the west. They had ridden the train all yesterday too. The brothers didn't know that this town was so far away. The scenery of the country flashed by outside of the window, trees, houses, and field raced by as Ed watched. After what felt like forever the train started to slow down. The Elrics sat up as the conductor of the train announced that the stop was Dublith. Ed and Al hadn't eaten since breakfast so they were happy that they were finally there.

They followed there new teacher while looking around. Dublith was bigger than Resembool but it was still considered a small town. The roads were like a city's and the buildings were taller.

Sig looked back at the two blond kids gapping at the town. He smiled and nudged his wife. She looked over at him and he pointed behind them. She looked back at the boys too and giggled. The boys were to busy taking in the town to notice the adults smiling at them.

"Here we are boys, home sweet home!" Izumi said snapping their daze.

They stood in front of a meat shop. The Elrics had expected a huge laboratory because of how good Izumi was. Ed and Al looked confused but followed the two people inside. They were greeted by meat everywhere. There was meat in fringes behind the counter and either side of the room, hanging from the ceiling, and baking in a rotisserie.

"Welcome back you two." A man said from behind the counter. "How was your trip?" He then looked behind the two adults to see the two kids that came in with them.

"Who is this, Izumi? Where did you pick these little ones at?"

"I AM NOT SHORT."

Every one looked at the angry ten year old in surprise accept his brother. Al just looked embarrassed at Ed outburst.

"Ed doesn't like to be called short" he explained as Ed just glared at the man.

"Oh well that's too bad considering he is short." Izumi said with a wave of the hand beginning to walk to the door behind the counter.

"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?" Ed would have jumped on her if Al hadn't held him back. "Let go of me Al!"

Just then Izumi turned around with lightning speed and grabbed Ed and flipped him into the wall behind the counter. If the man behind it hadn't ducked Ed would have crashed into him.

"Is that any way to talk to you teacher?" She was waving her finger at the upside down Ed.

"Teacher? I thought you didn't take on apprentices?" The man said while watching the boy side ever-so-slightly down be for falling down completely.

"Well Mason, I've decided to make an acceptation." Izumi said going into the house part of the shop.

"Owwww, did you really have to do that?" Ed was rubbing his head while trying to get up.

As Izumi passed him she knocked him down again with a low roundabout to his legs. Ed came crashing down again. Al ran to his brother's side.

"I think you should shut up now, brother." Al said helping him up.

"Your brother is wise. You should listen to him." The man identified as Mason said. "He is you bigger brother right?"

Ed was about to yell again but saw Izumi watching him from the door way. He bit back his response and looked down so his eyes were covered by his bangs shading them. Instead Al answered.

"Ahhh, no… Ed is actually a year older than me." He gave a nervous laugh and looked sideways at his brother making sure he wasn't going to attack.

"Oh! My bad… sorry." Mason said.

There was an awkward silence after that, Al kept an eye on his brother. Then Sig broke the silence.

"Weren't you boy's hungry? You were complaining on the train."

"Oh yah!" both boys said at once, Ed looking up.

"Well we better give them a big meal since it's the last they will probably have in a while." Izumi said with a sparkle in her eye.

"What!" The Elrics felt their stomachs drop.

"Better go start it, shouldn't we dear?" She asked Sig like she didn't hear them.

"Sure, what should we make?"

"How bout stake? That is always good."

"Ok," he turned grabbing five stakes out to the fridge to the left of him. Then he walked into the house part of the shop through the door behind the counter. They followed only after Mason put a hand on each of their backs and pushed. As soon as Mason's hands left the boys' backs his skin started to tingle of a moment then stopped. He looked at his hand then shrugged it off following them through the door.

After waiting awhile the food was finally done. The Elrics thanked the Curtsies and started eating. They introduced themselves to Mason and he introduced himself. He was an employee here at the Curtis' meat shop and stayed for dinner quite often. As the boys ate they answered most of Mason's questions. Izumi and Sig asked a few questions also but most of their questions were answered on the train. When it got to questions about their parents the brothers grew quiet and stopped eating. Mason looked confused and Izumi answered for them.

"They don't have parents."

"Oh, sorry about that." He offered an apology.

Ed and Al just sat there, lost in memories of their mom. They snapped out of it and started eating again. Izumi and Sig gave each other a concerned look then kept eating.

After the meal Sig showed the brothers the spare room. It only had one bed but that didn't matter, they had shared a bed at home a lot. Whenever one of them had a nightmare or if they just wanted to talk under the covers.

They fell asleep relatively fast with their backs facing each other.

Ed was awaken when he fell out of bed. Actually he was more like pushed.

"Ow, Al, why did you push me off?" he rubbed his eyes but opened them when he heard wings flapping.

Al had grown his wings in his sleep, that's what pushed Ed out of the bed. This happened to each of them when they had a really bad dream. One time Ed had actually flown out of the window during a bad dream about scientists taking him away from his brother and mom. This was when she was still alive. Ed had taken off and Al had chased him down after waking up to him jumping out the window and flying away.

Al's pure white wings bat up and down as he struggled with the sheet wrapped around him. His wings were really loud so Ed had to wake him up before some one comes in and sees them.

"Al, Alphonse!" he said in a loud whisper, shaking his brother's shoulder. He didn't wake up so he went to plan C because plain B was yelling loudly into his ear.

Ed put one of his hands over Al's mouth and pinched Al's nose with the other hand. Al struggled agents his brother but finally woke up.

"Ahhh! Oh Ed," Al had bolted upright and started to talk loudly.

"Shhh," he put a hand back over Al's mouth and looked over his shoulder to the door. "We're at Dublith remember? Be quiet." He lowered his hand then pointed at Al's wings, "Put those away. They might come in to see what all the noise was."

Al looked over his shoulder at his wings. He turned back to Ed and nodded. Ed watched as his wings were sucked back into his back, it took just seconds for them to retract. Just as the last feathers disappeared there was a knock at the door. Sig's head popped in.

"Sorry, Al had a bad dream so he was being loud." Ed smiled and rubbed the back of his head.

Sig nodded and left, closing the door behind him. Ed turned back to Al.

"That was close, wasn't it?"

"Yah, I'm sorry brother. I almost got us shipped off to the closest zoo didn't I?"

"It's not your fault, Al. You were having a nightmare and we know what that dose."

"Lets go back to sleep. Ok?"

"Sure Al, goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Ed got back into bed and they fell back asleep.

The sun started to come in trough the window waking the brothers. They stretched and yawned.

"Teacher said we were going to start the provisional training today right?" Al asked with a big smile on his face.

"Yah and we're going to ace it so we can stay and train longer!" Ed looked at his brother his golden eyes filled with confidence.

Al smiled even wider and they both left the room. The house was quiet and no one was in the kitchen or bathrooms. Ed and Al guessed that their teacher wasn't up yet so they went outside. It was beginning to look like a beautiful day. The brothers took a breath of the fresh morning air. They thought about taking a walk but voted agents it; it was an unfamiliar town so they could get lost. So they just lied on the grass watching the clouds float by. Each cloud was splashed with color from the rising sun.

"There you boys are. I was looking for you." They turned to see their teacher standing by the door.

"We got up and no one was awake so we came outside." Al said, he had a way to make anything sound innocent.

"You got up before me, that's impressive." Teacher said with a smile.

Ed and Al didn't know her long but that smile gave them the creeps.

"You two can join me with my morning sparing practice. I have a dummy out in the back, follow me." She went around the side of the house to the back yard. Ed and Al followed her, both having a bad feeling.

"Ok, have either of you ever spared with any one?" both brothers shook their heads. "Well then I'll give you some basic lessons."

After her 'basic lessons' the boys felt like jelly. The sun hadn't moved at all from when they started. They were both covered in burses. They lay on their backs as Izumi towered over them.

"You can go inside; I'll finish my sparing with the dummy. My husband should be getting breakfast done any minute."

The Elrics slowly got up and went inside. As they stumbled into the kitchen, they smelled bacon and eggs. Sig was standing at the stove and looked over his shoulder at the boys. He smiled at seeing all the burses on their skin and chuckled knowing she went easy on them.

Teacher came in a little while later brushing off her hands. Ed and Al were already eating and Sig just sat down with a plate. She grabbed herself some breakfast and sat down. She looked over at the boys and noticed that the burses seemed to shrink from the size they were a while ago.

"After breakfast we will start the training to see if you are worthy to be my students." Izumi said after shrugging off the burses.

"Really?" Al asked as Ed continued to stuff his face.

A little while later they were in a boat sailing in a lake outside of Dublith. Mason was rowing. Both of them where leaning out side of the boat splashing the water. Soon Ed and Al noticed they were sailing to an island in the middle of the water. When they reached the island Teacher told them to get out of the boat and onto the shore of the island.

"Here take this." She threw something it to Ed's hands.

"A knife?" Ed asked after he cheeked what it was.

"This is an uninhabited island, after all. No electricity, no wells, no house to shelter you from the rain, and no wild animals…at least, probably not." Both boys looked at her.

A smile came to her face, it was the same one from earlier, "For one month, you two are to survive by yourselves on this island." They stared at her disbelievingly. "Oh, and during that time, the use of alchemy is prohibited."

Both boys started to panic.

"WHAT IS THIS?" They both yelled at the sky.

"I'll come to pick you up in one month." She was walking back to the boat and waving.

"J-just a sec!" Ed said desperately.

Izumi stopped and looked over her shoulder. "One is all, all is one."

Getting into the boat she turned around to the stunned boys.

"If you don't find the answer in one month," she said sitting down, "then I'm sending you back to Resembool." She explained. "See ya!" Then boat took off at abnormal speeds.

The boys were left looking out at the lake. Once they got their senses back they looked at each other.

"What do we do now?" Al asked.

"I think I read a book somewhere saying the first thing to do is make shelter." Ed replied thinking.

"Ok then, let's go find a spot." Al turned around and looked at the forest behind them.

They walked into the brush and started searching for a good spot to make a shelter. After a half and hour they found a clearing that looked alright. They started by putting a bunch of leaves in the center of the clearing for nights that it was nice out. This took most of the day so by the time they got it done it was late. Ed flopped down next to his little brother resighting what their teacher had said.

"One is all, all is one… awww, why couldn't she have given us more to go off of?"

"One is all, all is one. What could that mean?" Al asked Ed.

"Is it a riddle? I don't get it at all." Ed said frustrated.

"But unless we give her an answer in a month, we won't get any real training." Al reminded him.

"Aw, fuck! How is this supposed to be alchemy training?" Ed yelled sitting up. "She probably fucking tricked us!" Right then his stomach gave a loud growl and he fell back onto the ground.

"Let's sleep." He said exhausted.

"How about we get up early tomorrow and find some food?" Al said sounding just as exhausted as Ed.

"Mm-hmm" that was all that was heard from Ed.

**Weeeeeeeeeee, sugar rush! **

**Dying Heart Alchemist**


	3. Chapter 3

**Well, third chapter I wrote tonight.**

**I will have to edit it later, right now I want to sleep. **

Heavenly Brothers

Ch.3 The Island

Ed was awaken by the presents of some one standing over him. He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"Al? You going to the bathroom?" he looked beside him when he heard light snoring next to him.

Al was still asleep. Ed looked up to the figure above him. A man in a mask looked back at him through glowing eyes. The masked man lifted up his arm which held a club and brought it down onto were the two Elrics were sleeping. Ed had grabbed Al and pulled him out of the way just in time.

"What is it Brother? Can't you use the bathroom by yourself…" Al mumbled still asleep.

"You idiot! Open your eyes!" Al opened his eyes to see the masked man charging toured them. He brought the club down.

They scrambled back and put their backs to a tree. They stayed there watching the man stand up after pounding the spot they just where with the club, missing them by inches. Once the man straitened out he said a warning.

"Get out!"

"You've gotta be kidding! If we run, then our training will be-" Ed was cut off by his brother pushing him to the side.

He tumbled to the side as the masked man went after Al.

"Damn," Ed said as he tried to look up.

The man was swinging wildly at Al. Al dodged every swing but one finally caught him. He fell to the ground and the man punted him acrossed the clearing. Al landed hard.

"Al!"

The man walked up to Al who lying on his back. He raised his club to finish Al off, but Ed ran acrossed to them and punched the man on his cheek. The man acted like it didn't faze him and swung at Ed. This sent him flying; he landed near the edge of the clearing. As the man was distracted with Ed, Al was able to stand up.

"Damn…Al! Run!" they both took off in opposite directions.

The man looked at each way they had gone and headed the direction in between. Both Elrics ran as fast as they could just incase the masked man was right behind them. They circled around in hopes that the other did the same. Ed had run out of breath and leaned agents a tree.

"Now what? Don't get lost on me, Al…" he said looking up.

A hand came out and grabbed his shirt from behind. Ed froze and started yelling franticly.

"I won't taste good if you eat me!"

"Brother, it's me!" Al popped his head from behind the tree.

Ed turned around tears in his eyes. "Al! Thank goodness! I thought I'd lost you!"

"Shh!" Al turned to look behind him.

The man came out of a bush and looked around. The boys hid behind a tree covering each other's mouth. The masked man walked away eventually and they made their way back to the camp.

They stayed up the rest of the night not willing to go back to sleep until the sun started to rise.

It was about mid-day when they finally woke up.

"Who was that man? I'm scared! I'm scared to death!" Al said as they walked trough the small forest. "And she said there were no wild animals here!"

"There's something even worse than wild animals here!" Ed said also freaked out.

"What should we do?" Al asked.

"What can we do? It's another mouth before they're coming for us." Ed said checking the strength of some vines along the edge of the clearing. "For the time being, we can't fight on empty stomachs." He cut down the vines to make some traps.

Soon they caught a rabbit in one trap.

"You did it!" Al said running to Ed with the trapped rabbit.

"We can catch it with the right kind of trap!" Ed exclaimed.

The little rabbit was squirming on the grown as they watched it.

"So…" Al said looking at the thing try to get loose. "How do we eat it?"

"We stick it!" Ed said bringing up the knife.

"We stick it?" Al asked afraid.

They both walked up to the rabbit and gulped. The rabbit looked up at them with big eyes begging to be let go.

"You'll have to do it." Ed said defeated handing Al the knife.

"No! Brother, you do it! I've never killed an animal before." Al said holding up his hands, palms out.

"Neither have I!" Ed yelled back.

"That's not fair! You always force me to do the things you don't want to!" Al shouted.

"I make you do what?" Ed asked angrily.

Just then a fox darted out from the near by brush and stole the rabbit at their feet.

"Ahhh!" both boys yelled. "Hold it!"

They chased the fox through the vegetation yelling at it. It dropped the rabbit and turned to face them. The fox lunged forward, Al was able to jump out of the way but all Ed could do was turn just enough so the fox would miss his face. The fox still was able to bite hard on Ed's shoulder. Ed fell into a bush and it let go running to the rabbit. It picked up the rabbit and took off.

"Brother are you ok?" Al looked at Ed's shoulder and saw blood but before he could move to help him, Ed was already taking off after the fox.

"Come back here you bastard!" Ed yelled after the fox, still following it.

Once they caught up to it, it was back at its den. Watching the fox it set the rabbit at the opening in the roots of a tree. Then two small baby foxes came out and started eating the rabbit their mom brought for them. Ed and Al thought it was cute at first but once they started digging into the rabbit they didn't feel like having rabbit any more.

"Want to go fishing, Al" Ed was grossed out at the foxes' lunch.

"Yah lets go fishing." Al replied grossed out too.

They went and made some fishing rods and went down to an outcropping of rocks near where Teacher left them. They stayed there for the rest of the day. By the time the sun was going down they didn't catch anything.

"I wonder if you can eat fox…?" Ed asked menacingly.

Al laughed lightly. "Take it easy."

Just then a fish bit Al's hook. "Got one!"

They went a little ways into the forest and started a fire. They felt giddy that they were about to eat. The fish was cooking nicely when something landed like a bolder behind them. They looked to see the masked man looming over them. They ran away screaming leaving the fish for him to take.

They made it back to the clearing and marked another day down on a tree, one the edge of the clearing.

"There's no way we're giving up! 28 more days left!" Ed said as another grove in the tree was added.

As days went by the brothers tried fishing with both rods and spears with no luck. The traps were failing, only catching Ed once. They even tried catching a bird to eat. They had to hide from the man in the mask almost every night. Before they knew it, it had been seven days without eating more than two of three fish and a few fruits. They felt weak and hungry. They even tried some mushrooms they found but got very bad stomach ache. Soon the hunger got to them and they forgot what they were there for.

"Say… What did we come here for, again?"

"Beats me…"

On the tenth day it rained. They hadn't found any food at all.

"What would happen if we died here?" Ed asked clutching the shoulder the fox bit under a makeshift tent made of leaves and sticks. Al had been sitting in the rain.

"No way…" Al said looking down at his hands. "Winry and Grandma would grieve for us. There's still a lot of things I want to do. All of this… what does it have to do with alchemy? I've had enough! I want to go home!" Al curled up into a ball and cried. Ed stayed silent.

Later that night the masked man showed up. He cornered the brothers up against a bolder. He charged kneeing Ed in the stomach. Ed went flying into a bush; he just lied there not wanting to move. Al had ran up behind the man with a small log to hit him with but the man turned around kicking it out of Al's hands. The masked man started to beat up Al with the club and his fists.

Ed heard his brother being beat up but he couldn't get up to help him. The looked to his side to see a cicada being pulled apart by some ants, the thing was dead but the world didn't stop like it did. He seemed to realize something because he got up and stammered to his feet and pulled out the knife. The masked man was pulling Al up by the front of his shirt. Ed held out the knife with shaky hands.

"Let go of Al…" the masked man turned around. "Let go of Al…" Ed said again.

The man just looked at him, then after a long minute he dropped Al and walked away. Ed watched him go then dropped the knife into the ground. He slid to his knees looking up at the rain pouring down.

The next day he talked to Al.

"We talked about what would happen if we died here, remember?"

"Mm-hmm, everyone would grieve."

"Um, that's the subjective part. Looking at it objectively, if I died, the world would keep on going as if nothing had happened."

"Your existence _is_ a tiny one."

"Don't call me small!" he hit Al.

"Owwww,"

"Well, if I, with my small existence, was to die, my body would still remain."

They talked like that for a while coming up with the answer to their teacher's riddle.

There is a giant flow that they couldn't see with their eyes. They were one little part within the larger flow. One within all.

But then, all of the ones have to come together for the all to exist. All within one.

The world follows the flow of the greater laws that we can't even imagine. We learn that flow, break it down, and reconstruct it.

And that is alchemy.

Once they understood it they started to under stand how to survive on the island.

The days went by fast once they got the hang of surviving on the island. They caught lots of food and the masked man stopped bothering the brothers. They felt confident they where going to survive. But one day something occurred to Ed. He then face palmed.

"Hay Al," Ed said hand still over his face.

"What's the matter," Al asked looking at his brother.

"We're part angel right?" Ed asked behind his hand.

"Yes…" Not sure where his brother was going with this.

"We could have flown off this island whenever we wanted." Ed explained seeing his brother didn't get it.

It took a second but Al then faced palmed too.

"Oh my god, are we idiots. We should have thought of that before." Al said behind a hand too.

"Well we wouldn't have been able to train with teacher if we had; besides we only have one day left." Ed said removing his hand.

"Yah, I guess your right. But don't you think we should have thought of that before?" Al said.

"Aren't you the one who is supposed the optimist?" Ed asked face palming again. Al shrugged.

When Teacher came they sat on their knees in front of her.

"Ok boys, what is the meaning of 'one is all, all is one'?" she asked.

"All is the world," Al said.

"And I am the one." Ed finished.

Izumi just stared and started laughing. She hadn't thought that they would get it. They looked confused until she said they passed. They jumped up and high fived each other, Ed got so excited that he felt his wings starting to come out. He then panicked, they just were accepted to be pupils, and he wasn't going to ruin this for him and Al. He stopped jumping and used all his will power to force his wings to stop growing, it worked. Al gave him a look that said 'what's wrong' and he gave him a look that said 'I tell you later'. Izumi just looked at them funny like she was trying to figure out what just happened. Instead they just jumped into the boat ready to leave.

They made their way back to the meat shop to rest for tomorrow. Their real training starts then.

**Lets see I started writing around 9p.m. maybe, and now my clock says 7:37a.m.**

**Wow, I wrote three chapters. All to this story, now I just need to edit them. **

**Fun…**

**Dying Heart Alchemist**


	4. Chapter 4

**I like this story!**

**Even I am exited as I wrote this chapter. It has more action.**

**Hope you share my feelings!**

**Enjoy!**

Heavenly Brothers

Ch.4 Found out?

It's been six months since the Elric Brothers came to train at Dublith under the guidance of Izumi Curtis. Their mornings started out with sparing practice. Ed and Al faced each other and Al always won. Once a mouth they would face Teacher two on one, she was always the one and always kicked their butts. She could help them to an extent but if she overexerted herself, she would start to cough up blood. It was a scary sight to watch. The brothers would be covered in burses at the end of the day but they seemed to disappear over night. Izumi just thought that they were tough little kids. After sparing practice they ate lunch. After lunch they worked on alchemy.

Their alchemy training consisted of identifying and recreating alchemy circles, learning the right alchemy circles to use in different situations, and the law of equivalent exchange. She drilled them every witch way. She pushed them so hard once Al wings grew out of the strain of his body. Good thing Izumi had her back turned, Al stoped them half way then forced them back in and then fell unconscious. Izumi thought it was from the training and dismissed them for the day. It didn't take energy to grow and retract their wings but if they stopped the wings before they are all the way out and then retract them, it strained their body a lot.

Ed and Al's wings started to get cramped up from the lack of use. They brought them out whenever they could, usually in the bathroom or in their room late at night. They haven't flown for a long time, not since they left Resembool. Soon Ed couldn't take it anymore.

One night a he lay awake with his wings stretched out. This particular night the brothers decided to sleep with their wings out, so Ed took the floor while Al lay in the bed. Ed was starred at the ceiling and head on a pillow taken from the bed. They never really worried about Teacher or Sig coming in and seeing their wings in the morning because the boys always got up before them.

"Hey, Al, you still awake?" Ed whispered.

"Yah, Brother, I am." Al whispered back.

Ed propped himself up with one elbow and asked Al in an exited whisper. "Hay, Al, do you what to go flying?"

"But Brother! It was ok back in Resembool cause we lived outside of the town where no one could see us, but here the buildings are so close together someone is bound to see us!" Al said in an urgent whisper.

"Yah I know," Ed said looking out the window, "that's why we're going back to that lake we spent that month at."

"I don't want to go back to that island!"

"We don't have to land on the island, we can just fly over it. No one lives near it so no one can see us!" Ed smiled at his genius plain.

Al thought it over, smiled, and then nodded. "And the only person who could see us would be that masked man and I doubt he will tell any one." He joked.

The got ready to go, they put on warm clothes because it had snowed a few days prior. They decided that they wouldn't take any snacks or water because they would just make a ruckus in the kitchen and wake Teacher.

They jumped out their window glad that it was a one story house. The window had faced the backyard so they didn't have to risk going through the front yard. There were already many foot prints in the snow due to their sparing practices so they didn't have to worry about teacher being suspicious that there were foot pints leading acrossed the yard into the ally. The streets had been plowed and the sidewalks had little to no snow on them. It was easy to get out of the town and it was just a little ways to the lake.

As they got closer to the lake the houses seemed to disappear. By the time they got to the edge of the lake the last house they passed was about a five minute walk back down the road. Ed started to take off his coat when Al stopped him by putting a hand on his shoulder.

"What is it, Al?"

"Brother there is a house on the other side of the lake." Al pointed out a dark shape on the opposite shore.

"It looks like no one lives in it or they all are asleep. Besides if we stay near this side of the lake they probably won't see us." Ed reassured his brother.

Al seemed satisfied and started taking off his coat and shirt, Ed did the same. They had ripped many shirts and pajamas growing their wings. Soon both brothers looked at each other smiling, they both had been wanting to fly for awhile. At the same time their wings sprouted out of their backs, shooting out like rockets. Each of their wings was about six feet long maybe more, which gave them each the wingspan of over twelve feet.

They took off by jumping as hard as they could and flapping their powerful wings at the same time. The feeling was amazing to be back up in the air after so long. Ed laughed out in joy. He looked back to see Al flying in a figure eight. His smile grew wider.

After a while of loopty-loops and just stretching their wings, Ed had an idea.

"Hay Al!" he yelled acrossed the space between them waving at him to come over.

"What Brother?" Al asked once he was in talking distance.

"How bout we spar while flying?" Ed asked his little brother.

Al stared for a moment then a big smile came onto his face.

"That sounds fun!"

"Well duh, that's why I suggested it" Ed said. "We got flying down like pros and our fighting is improving. I think we could fight in the air just fine."

"Sure!" Al replied smile growing.

They hovered about eight feet away from each other right in the middle of the lake. The island was right below them. They were about thirty feet up. They just flapped their wings to keep from falling to the ground. They stayed at the same height watching each other to see which one to move first.

Al made the first move, charging at Ed with a few powerful strokes of his pure white wings. Ed blocked the punch and aimed a kick to his brother's side. Al sank fast causing Ed to miss. Then from were he ended up, Al took off again upper cutting Ed from underneath. Ed was forced backwards a few feet but he righted himself and flew toward Al bringing back his fist then connecting it with Al stomach. Al doubled over but didn't fall from the sky. Ed took this chance and brought his leg down on Al's back just above where his wings were coming out of his back. When Al recovered the fighting continued. After a intense battle of dodging and powerful blows, Ed came out the victor.

"Haha, I finally one for once!" Ed said grabbing his right arm and flexing his muscles. "Maybe fighting in the air is my talent!"

"Maybe, Brother." Al looked happily at Ed as he celebrated. As they caught their breathes Al asked, "Do you think we should be getting back now, it's getting awfully late?"

"Yah, why not, we should come back here tomorrow."

"Sure, it was so fun to fly again." Al said as they landed where they left their clothes.

The snow had lost its brilliant white color when the boys compared it to their wings, now it was more of a dull white almost gray. They retracted their wings and grabbed their clothes putting them on. By the time they got back to the house it was a few hours past midnight. They had fallen asleep fast, both dreaming of flying through the sky with each other.

The Elrics had made flying at the lake an activity they enjoyed almost every night. The times when they didn't go out to the lake were if they were too tired from the days training or if it was storming out. The strong winds were suicide for the young angels and their wings got to heavy to lift the boys up if they got wet.

In the months that followed Ed and Al started to notice a few new 'powers'.

One day while sparing in the backyard, Al got real mad at Ed for some reason or another and nailed Ed in the face with a punch. Instead of flying back a few feet, Ed was sent a few blocks over, and when Ed got back he punched Al back, sending_ him_ flying over blocks too.

Both had super strength. Teacher had been inside and missed the whole thing. In the days that followed the boys struggled to learn how to control their new found strength, they even told Teacher they didn't want to fight her like they always did to test their skills. They were afraid they might hurt her. She just took it as they didn't want their butts kicked.

A few other powers surfaced as the weeks continued.

Al woke up invisible one morning and Ed's hand disappeared in the shower. That was an interesting day. Their body parts kept on disappearing and reappearing all day long. Teacher, Sig, and Mason had almost caught them a number of times. Mason had been unloading a delivery and the brothers were helping. Ed turned around to ask Al a question but ended up pushing Al behind a crate. Al's head had disappeared and they couldn't let Mason see. A few minutes later Al's head was back and they helped unload the rest of the delivery without incident. Dinner was real fun for the bothers, as you could imagine they ate fast and got out of there quick before anything bigger than their fingers disappeared.

Then after they finally got the hang of invisibility, other than a missing toe or two, another power showed up.

Ed was leaning against the side of the house to catch his breath after a particularly rough spar with Al and half his arm sank into the wall. Startled, he tried to pull it out but it was stuck. Al noticed Ed struggling so he walked over to see what was wrong. He saw Ed's arm and gasped, he looked around to make sure no one was around and moved to help his brother.

Pulling at it proved to be a waste of time other than hurting Ed. Al's plan to cut off Ed's arm was quickly denied by the trapped blond. Asking Teacher was out of the question because she would ask how he got stuck and they couldn't say it was alchemy for it would be classified as human transmutation and that wouldn't be believable. Al asked how he had did it in the first place and Ed said he didn't know.

Ed concentrated on his arm, slowly he was able to pull it out. The boys jumped up and down for getting Ed free until Al sank to his knees into the ground. They had gained the power to move through solid objects. The two seemed to get their powers on the same days, they suspected that was because the got their wings on the same day.

The powers they had before included their wings, great vision and hearing, and healing abilities that worked on other people as well as themselves. Now to add to the list they had super strength, invisibility, and they could move through stuff. They practiced alchemy during the day and their angel powers during the night at the lake. They never landed on the island if they could avoid it.

Their night training evolved from light sparing to heated battles using their powers. They would go invisible to sneak up on each other and the power of fazing through stuff to dodge attacks. The brothers could use their super strength against each other because their bodies could take it. Soon they could use the newfound powers like second nature. They reframed from using them during the day while training with Teacher, just incase she saw anything.

Ed's anger exploded once when Teacher commented on his fighting. He jumped around and did flips to dodge or if she threw him. She said it was probably easy for him to do such 'tricks' due to his small size. Al had to use his strength to hold him back because Ed was totally willing to smash her face in with his super strength.

They soon found themselves totally exhausted from training both night and day. They had free days on Sunday to rest, but they rather cheek out the town on those days. They never went to church since their mother died. Even though they knew heaven and God were real, they won't religious in the slightest. The Elrics kept up with their training schedule because they needed to learn alchemy _and_ how to control their powers.

A while after they started this training schedule there came a day neither of them wanted to leave bed for alchemy training that day. They knew they were in for one from Teacher, but they just couldn't move.

**Izumi's POV**

Around ten a.m. Izumi grew impatient with her two pupils. She kicked down the unlocked door and walked in. Both boys where huddled in the bed they shared looking at their teacher scared out of their minds. The bed was just big enough for them to share it.

"And why aren't you boys up yet!" she headed to the side of the bed.

"Ahhh, w-we don't-" Al started but was cut off.

"You don't want to train today, is that it?" she yelled now standing right beside the bed.

She reached out for Ed to pull him up by the front of the shirt. No doubt this was his idea. But she stopped as she saw the two boy's faces. Both their cheeks were tinted red and there was sweat on their foreheads. She leaned in and put her had on Ed's forehead. He cringed back thinking she was going to hurt him, but looked up at her when she just put her hand on his brow.

"You have a fever." She stated then cheeked Al's temperature too. "You do too, Al."

The boys looked at each other then back at their teacher. She noticed both of their eyes were dull.

"Well, I guess I can't punish you for being sick." She said turning to leave the room. "I'll get Sig to fix the door."

She came back with a glass thermometer and a bowl of water with two washcloths in it. Izumi wrung the washcloths out and stuck one on each of the boy's foreheads. She also took their temperatures, Al's was around a hundred and Ed's around a hundred and three. She called the doctor because she never dealt with sick children before. He came around noon and checked the boys. Sig had fixed the door by then.

"It looks like it could be a normal cold or… it could be over exhaustion." The doctor said looking at the two boys sitting at the edge of the bed. "These are your student's, correct?"

"Yes, they came about a year and a half ago." Izumi said.

"Well, Izumi I know how you can be with your 'training', so I give you this advice, let up on them if you are making them train like you usually do. They _do_ show signs of over exhaustion." The doctor said turning to her.

"Yes, I guess I have been pushing them a lot lately." She said. Sig was right behind her so he squeezed her shoulders to tell her it wasn't all her fault.

"By the way, I've been meaning to ask you how are those new pills helping you?" the doctor asked.

"Oh, they're working fine!" she said with a smile.

"That's great." He looked back at the boys. "Make sure these kids get plenty of rest… and a hot bath isn't a bad idea either." He said back to the Curtises.

"Ok, we'll watch over them don't you worry." Sig said hands still on his wife's shoulders.

They showed the doctor out after he said the boys will be fine in a couple of days of rest. When went back to the boy's room, Ed and Al were still sitting on the edge of the bed. When Izumi walked in Ed looked up then at the floor.

"I'm sorry," Ed said which made Izumi stop and stare.

"What do you mean, Ed? I'm the one who was pushing you to hard." She said nervously.

Ed kept staring at the floor. "No it is our fault not being able to keep up with your training." He looked nervously from the floor to her then back to the floor, shifting a little. "And... Al and I… have been… training at night at the lake."

Izumi was taken back at Ed's words. "W-what?"

Ed looked up at her and tried to smile. "At night we go down to the lake outside of town and practice by our selves."

Izumi and Sig looked at the boys in surprise. She had secretly been impressed at the rate the boys were learning at but finding out that they had been sneaking off at night to train was just overwhelming. Ed looked back down at his feet and the smile faded.

"We just wanted to get better at…" his voice left off.

"When did you start doing this?" She asked anger rising in her voice, but it was anger at herself not at the boys. Ed flinched thinking it was them she was angry at.

"We started about six months after we started training here." Ed muttered the answer.

"A year? You've been sneaking out that long?" this time she was surprised, she had thought that the answer was going to be a few weeks or so, not a year.

"Yah, we would leave when we were sure you were asleep around ten or eleven. Then we would train for a while and come back around two." Ed explained in a calm voice with a hint of sadness in it. "Isn't that right, Al?" he turned to his brother who had been quiet this whole time.

"Mm-hmm" he nodded his head looking up from the floor to Ed. His eyes were watery.

"But you two got up every morning at six! That gave you only four hours of sleep a night!" Izumi was beside herself that she hadn't notice the boys' exhaustion before.

"I'm sorry…" Ed said again.

"No it is my fault. I made you think that you needed to train extra. _I'm_ sorry." She walked up to the brothers and hugged both of them. Ed and Al looked at her in surprise like she was a dog that just started talking.

Just then, Al started to fidget and shake uncontrollably. Izumi let go and stared. Ed looked at his brother scared.

"Al, are you alright?" he asked.

Al jumped up and ran into the hallway to the bathroom. He slammed the door and you could hear the click of the lock. Ed was the first one out of the room and to the bathroom door. He pounded on it.

"Alphonse, are you ok?"

The door unlocked and cracked open. Al's arm came out and dragged Ed in. The door closed and locked again. Izumi and Sig ran up to the door.

"Ed, Al, what's going on?" Izumi asked through the door. The boys voices were low murmurs be hind the door.

"Everything is fine!" Ed frantic voice was heard.

**Ed's POV**

On the other side of the door Al was swaying clutching his head. Al had said his wings were growing but it felt different then normal, he couldn't stop them. Pain coursed trough him once he finished telling Ed this. He let out a yelp of pain as his right wing shot out with lightning speed. This was one thing that told Ed something was seriously wrong other than the pain Al was in. Both wings always came out at the same time, and never one at a time. There was more banging at the door.

"Ed, let us in! Al needs help!" It was Sig.

Al gave another yelp and his left wing shot out hitting the mirror cabinet above the sink shattering it into a million pieces. Some of it cut Al's wing and the rest cut Ed who was closer to the mirror. Ed shielded his face but his arms got cut up instead.

"What was that? Let us in darn you or I'll kick down the door." Izumi yelled making Ed panic more.

"Al, can you hide your wings?" Ed asked but Al shook his head.

They couldn't see Al's wings! They would call the military and take them away. They could take him but he wouldn't let them take Al! Ed looked franticly around the small bathroom. The window above the tub was about an inch from the ceiling and was only about five inches wide, they could never fit though their even without wings.

The bath tub! He could put Al in it and draw the curtain so they didn't see him!

"Al, Can you hear me? Get into the tub!" Ed told his brother grabbing Al's arm guiding him to the tub.

As the first kick hit the door Al clamored into the tub. Teacher was going to get in here no matter what. Ed had just pulled the curtain closed when the door came off its hinges. Ed starred up in horror as Teacher waked in.

**Cliffhanger!**

**What will happen? Are they going to be found out?**

**Dying Heart Alchemist**


	5. Chapter 5

**You know, I think I'm writing this half for any readers who decided to read this far, and half for myself to see what is next.**

**I just make this up on the spot. Sure, I have curtain things in store but most is just what pops into my head.**

**That is probably why I'm such a bad author. (Sobs in hands).**

**(Total 360 in emotions) Enjoy! **

Heavenly Brothers

Ch.5 Growing Pains

**Izumi's POV**

Izumi walked in with a determined look on her face. Ed watched in horror as she looked around. The mirror was shattered and Al was no where to be seen.

"Where is Alphonse?" she asked her voice betraying worry.

Another yelp came from behind the curtain although it was odious Al had tried to muffle it. Izumi eyed the bath tub and took a step closer. Ed moved and blocked her way by spreading his arms out.

"We can handle this by ourselves, Teacher." Ed said trying to sound convincing.

"Ed," she said sternly, "if Al is hurt or needs help, it's the adult's job to step in!"

"No! You can't help us! We'll do it ourselves!" Ed's voice was wavering, he was trying to hold back tears.

Izumi looked down at the eleven year old. She had never seen him cry, not even during the hardest parts of training. Seeing him like this told her something was very wrong. She looked up to the tub were Al was and saw a smear of blood too big for any of the cuts on Ed's face or arms.

"We can help. Al might be in trouble." She said in a calmer voice.

"No!" Ed yelled still not moving. "They'll just take Al and me away!"

Izumi and Sig just stared at him. Take him away? Who would take them away? Al yelled in pain again. Ed bit his lip still not moving, he was fighting the erg to be by his brother's side. Izumi took a step closer to the tub.

"No, I said!" Ed yelled pushing his teacher.

She went flying back into her husbands form, knocking them both down into the hallway. They looked up stunned at the boy. Where had he gotten that straight? Ed was in a fighting stance in the middle of the bathroom. He looked over his shoulder when his little brother yelled again. He glanced back at the two adults before turning around and rushing to his brother.

"Al are you all right?" he asked looking behind the curtain.

"Yah, Brother, but-" Al voice was surprisingly calm but another wave of pain hit him before he could finish.

Izumi stammered to her feet feeling one of her episodes coming on, but she had to help the boys first. She rushed Ed hoping to knock him down before he could react, but Ed turned around jabbing his palm into her stomach. That put her over the edge. She started coughing violently. Sig ran in to catch her before she fell on the floor. He barely fit in the small space.

She stood up with the help of her husband. Still coughing, she took a few steps toward the blond defending his brother. Just then Ed doubled over in pain making Izumi hesitate.

"No, not me too…" Ed muttered clutching his pounding head.

He sank to the floor by the tub and Al stuck his head out.

"Brother!"

"They're…they're going…going to take us to the military if they fi…find out!" Ed panted griping the side of the tub for support.

"Maybe we can tell them? M-maybe they will understand." Al said grimacing in pain.

"Boys," Sig said, "why ever would we call the military for?"

The Elrics looked up to the two adults. Ed was still panting heavily and Al's features were painted with pain.

"I guess we have to tell. There is no way out of this." Ed said looking at the floor.

Then he gave out a strangled cry. Izumi and Sig look in horror and amazement as a pure white wing shot out of Ed's back. It hit the wall behind the blonde with a sickening crack. Ed yelled in pain and fell forward.

"Brother!" Al screamed leaning out of the tub revealing a set of wings identical to the one Ed just grew.

Then the Curtises knew what Ed had tried desperately to hide. A million questions ran through their mind at that moment. They watched as Ed's second wing grew, this time straight up in the air due to Ed lying on his stomach. Al whimpered as he saw the feathers on Ed right wing, the one that crashed into the wall, start to turn crimson. The crack that was heard earlier was the bones breaking.

"Hehe, guess what, Teacher?" Ed said smiling as he crawled up onto his hands and knees. "We're angels."

Then both brothers passed out due to the pain

Izumi caught Ed before he fell to the ground and Al slumped down into the bath tub. She set Ed down carefully before she started coughing again. She stood there waiting for the episode to pass as Sig rubbed circles on her back. Once she was over it she looked down at the boys.

"Angels, huh?"

* * *

><p>Sig grabbed the boys, one in each arm, and carefully carried them back to the room. Once there, Izumi transmuted another bed because both couldn't fit in the bed already there. Sig set both boys down in each bed making sure not to jostle them. Standing up straight after putting Ed down in the transmuted bed, he looked at his wife with a questioning gaze.<p>

"I guess we have to wait till they wake up to learn what this is all about." Izumi answered her husbands silently asked question.

"I wonder why they thought that we would call the military. They know we wouldn't do that." Sig said looking down at the sleeping boys.

"For all we know they could be escaped chimeras, if we were anybody else then these boys would probably be on their way to a prison… or worse." Izumi said. One of the reasons that she hated the military is that they would kill anything without regret, if order to.

She left the room to go get towels to clean the boys' wounds. Apparently they had broken the cabinet's mirror in the bathroom and cut themselves up. Ed's face and arms were cut all over. As for Al, they suspect that he hit it with one of his wings because there were pieces of mirror in it and a huge cut.

When she got back she went to Ed's side first for he seemed the worst hurt. When she saw his face she gasped. Izumi quickly wiped away some blood from a cut then stared. The cut that the blood had come from had disappeared, the only indication that it was there was the blood. She did see that there had been a nasty cut there when they laid him down. What had happened?

As she continued cleaning the blood from the boys face and arms, the only scratch she found was the remainder of a huge gash on his arm which had almost all the way closed up. She watched it intently and saw it close the rest of the way up. She just gaped.

The only injury left was his broken wing. The top half of it was bent at an odd angle with a few ruffled feathers here and there. The blood stood out on the pure white wings. Izumi would have cried at the beauty of the wings if they weren't stained with the horrid red.

Once she finished with the eldest Elric she turned to the other. Al only injury was the cut on his wing. There was some blood but not as much as Ed's broken wing had. She removed all glass she could from the feathers, luckily none had gotten in the cut. But same as Ed the cut was healing but not as fast. She washed all the blood she could from Al wing, not trying this with Ed cause it probably would have caused him more pain.

Both boys seemed to be in a lot of pain due to their constant cries and the looks on their faces. Izumi had no idea what would cause the boys this much pain but she knew it had something to do with their… abnormalities.

It had been a few days now since they fell asleep. She looked at her watch and saw it was almost nine at night. She sighed and got up from the chair she was sitting in. Izumi had stayed and watched the boys the whole time. She got up and went to get something to eat. Her stomach growled slightly as she walked into the kitchen.

Ed's wing was still broken but was now looking better. It still was bent at an odd angle but it was starting to move back into place. That was the only injury between the both of the brothers all the rest were healed. She had many questions to ask her pupils when they finally regained conciseness.

She had just got done with her leftovers when she heard a thump from the room the boys were in. She rushed down the hall and into the room. The sight that met her eyes was Ed lying facedown on the floor with his wings spread flat on either side of him. He struggled to get up as he put his arms under him trying to push himself up. It was odious that he was still in pain but he desperately tried to move. Izumi went to his side offering help.

**Ed's POV **

Ed woke up to a dark room. He looked around trying to understand where he was. Pain shot through him as he tried to sit up. The memory of what happened before he passed out came flooding back once he recognized the room. For the first time he noticed he still had his wings out, one of them looked broken. His body had a dull ache but what really hurt were his wings, they felt like they were on fire. He tried retracting them but they just stayed there nonmoving then he realized that he couldn't move them at all. Just like when your leg goes to sleep and when you try to move it, it just lies there doing nothing no matter how had you try.

He looked to his side toward the other side of the room. There he saw Al, moonlight coming trough the window above illuminating his wings. The peaceful picture was shattered when Al whimpered in pain. Ed tried again to sit up this time ignoring the pain of his useless wings. Once he sat up he took a moment to push aside the pain then swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He slid off the bed, but the moment his legs hit the floor they gave out. He fell forward onto the wood floor. He laid there for a minute then struggled to get up by putting his arms under him pushing himself up. His wings felt like boulders.

A hand appeared in front of him, confused he looked up. Teacher was standing above him, arm outstretched. Ed blinked then reached out and grabbed her hand. She pulled him up effortlessly. He leaned against her moving toured Al. At first Teacher hesitated but then helped him to Al's bedside. As he walked forward as his wings dragged hopelessly acrossed the floor behind him. Every inch forward sent a new level of pain into Ed. He didn't care, his little brother was just as bad of shape as he was.

Once he made it to Al, he slumped to his knees. Teacher tried to catch him but he couldn't stand up any longer.

"Al, Alphonse, are you all right?" Ed's voice was horse.

"Ed, you two have been asleep for awhile. I don't know when Alphonse's going to wake up." Teacher tried to explain.

Ed ignored her and reached toward his brother. He grabbed Al's arm but as soon as their skin touched pain worse than anything so far exploded from his finger tips spreading down his arm. Ed collapsed to the floor screaming. He could hear Al screaming too, tears came to Ed's eyes, but they weren't from the pain though.

Soon the pain faded, leaving both brothers painting. Al had woken up when Ed had touched him and the pain came. Ed stood up no pain at all, accept his broken wing. Surprisingly it didn't hurt that much as long as he didn't shift his wing too much. Whatever happened a moment ago it had dispelled all of the pain. He could even move his wings again. Al sat up and looked at Ed, and then he jumped up and hugged Ed.

"Brother! W-what was that? It hurt so much." Al voice was filled with tears.

"I don't know," Ed said hugging him back.

They stayed like for that for a minute, Al crying on his shoulder and Ed just standing there. Soon Al sobs died down, he let go of Ed and sat back down on the bed. Ed then noticed Teacher standing behind him. He turned around facing her.

"I guess you want to know what we are." Ed said bluntly.

"That would be nice but you can tell us tomorrow. You looked exhausted." She said her face softening.

He nodded looking her in the eye. She left the room, closing the door. Ed turned back to Al.

"We have to leave." He said in an urgent whisper.

"B-but why?" Al asked scared at Ed's tone.

"You know why. They've seen what we are, they're going to call the military as soon as we tell them our story."

"But they didn't yet! Brother, we should trust them. Teacher wouldn't call the military, she hates them and…and I…I think she is trust worthy. You should trust them too!"

"How can you be so sure, Al?" Ed snapped.

"Cause she is our teacher."

Ed was just silent.

"We should go to sleep, Brother. We both need it. We can decide in the morning." Al said softly.

"Ok, move over." Ed told Al even though there was two beds now. He just wanted to keep his brother safe if anyone came to get them.

"We should put our wings away, so we both fit." Al said moving over.

"Oh," Ed looked over his shoulder at his wings. "Yah, your right."

Al retracted his wings then looked expectantly at Ed. Ed just stood their wings still out.

"What's wrong, Brother?" Al asked concerned.

"Well, I think my wing is broken. I don't know what will happen if I try to put my wings away." Ed said looking over at his bent wing.

"Oh… maybe I could try healing it?" Al asked.

"It's worth a shot." Ed shrugged turning around so Al could reach his wing.

Al reached over and gently took his brothers right wing. Ed cringed when his wing moved. Al reached over and put a hand over the spot were the wing bent awkwardly. His hand glowed a soft white and the wing bent back into place. Ed suppressed a scream of pain. Al stopped when his energy was almost complitly drained.

"That's all I can do, Brother. I'm too tired right now." Al panted behind him.

There was still a dull pain but Ed thought he could handle it. He retracted his wings slowly and when he got to the broken part a sharp pain stabbed at his back as it went in. When his wing was all the way in his back was throbbing.

"Are you going to be ok Brother?"

"Yah, just make room."

"Ok,"

Once Ed was under the sheets he fell asleep instantly. Al just chuckled and fell asleep too.

Izumi opened the door and looked in. "Good, they decided to stay. I was afraid I'd have to hurt them again to make them stay." She closed the door.

**Is that all it was, growing pains… or more? (Du-du-duuu)**

**Na, I'm just yanking your chain.**

**Dying Heart Alchemist**


	6. Chapter 6

**Hmmm… does Alphonse look cuter with wings and a halo, or with kitty ears and a tail?**

**I can't make up my mind…**

**Oh! Sorry if that question confuses you but the brothers don't have halos in this fic. **

**But Al is cute no matter what! So is Ed… kind of…**

**Ed: What! I am cute all the time!**

**Al: Not really, Brother.**

**Ed: TRATOR! (points accusingly at Al)**

**Dying: (ahem) I forgot to add a disclaimer to any of the last chapters so…**

**Disclaimer: If I owned FMA or FMA:B…God help us all. So it's a blessing I don't own it. **

Heavenly Brothers

Ch.6

"Brother…wak…p…" Al's voice was far off.

"Five more minutes…" Ed tugged the sheets over his head just to have them ripped off by something.

Ed sat up grabbing for the blanket that had just disappeared from his body. Eyes still closed he grabbed around his legs for the lost fabric. Not finding it, he fell back down on the bed and curled up into a ball. Something then pulled _him_ out of bed. The _something _was actually_ someone. _Al stood above him with a frown on his face.

"Do we have to do this every morning?"

"Allllllll, just let me sleep! My back still hurts!" Ed whined pouting at Al.

Ed stood up crawling back into the bed, but it was no use. He was already awake, he couldn't sleep with the sun in his face now.

"Sometimes I think I'm the older brother." Al said under his breath.

"WHAT WAS THAT?" Ed yelled hearing him.

"N-nothing, Brother! Besides be quiet, Teacher's still sleeping!" reminding Ed of the time.

"Oh…sorry" he said in a much quieter voice, but it was too late.

Footsteps where heard in the hallway, or more like stomping. They ducked under the bed as the door bust open and Teacher walked in. Luckily this time she didn't kick it down.

"I told you two before! If you get up this early then do it QUIETLY!" Teacher had a dark aura around her.

The brothers coward under the bed, afraid of the barely awake housewife. They hugged each other tightly and gulped. She saw the bed shaking and walked over.

"And here are the trouble makers." She said looking under the bed.

Ed and Al shrank to the wall. Teacher just glared daggers into them. She reached under and grabbed each boy by the scruff of their necks (since they didn't have shirts on). She threw them acrossed the room, they landed hard on the floor.

"One hundred push ups, each!" She pointed at the Elrics and walked out of the room.

"Y-yes sir!" they said getting started right away.

A hundred push ups weren't that hard but they had just got up so they were fighting the sluggishness they still had in their muscles and brain. When they got done, they were fully awake and could hear Teacher making breakfast in the kitchen. Al was about to run out of the room to the food waiting but Ed grabbed his arm.

"Don't you remember what happened? They'll ask questions. I still think we should leave before they can stop us." Ed said letting go of his little brother. Al turned around to face him.

"And I still think that we can tell them. Besides, they already seen us and they could tell anyone to look for us if we ran." Al explained. "It won't hurt to make them understand. They might think that we are some escaped test subjects or something. Besides she is acting just as normal as always."

"I guess your right," Ed said looking at his brother. "I guess it won't hurt to tell…"

"Good because I'm hungry," Just then Ed's stomach growled. "And it looks like you are too, Brother." Al gave Ed a smirk.

"Traitor…" Ed murmured to his stomach as he was dragged out of the room by Al.

**Izumi POV **

She was making French toast when to boys ran in. Al sat eagerly at the table as Ed just kept shifting nervously in his seat. She turned around smiling, Ed tensed up but Al just grinned back. Ed kept his gaze with her just daring her to ask the question.

"So boys," She started Ed tensing up more "How did you sleep?" Ed seemed taken back while Al answered cheerfully.

"Great Teacher, we slept great!" Then he nudged his brother, he snapped out of his shocked state then looked away.

"Sure," he muttered barely audible.

A few minutes later, Izumi put a plate full of French toast in front of each boy. Ed drenched his in syrup and tore into it with out a second thought. Al started eating too but not nearly as ravenous as Ed. She sat down with her plate too, adding butter and syrup to hers before starting to eat. By that time, Ed had half of his done already.

During the meal, Ed kept stealing glances at her. She could tell he was waiting for when the questions started to come, but she was going to wait till after they ate and Sig was awake. When Sig did come to the kitchen Izumi and Al were almost done. Ed had gotten done a long time ago so he was sitting back in his chair, crossing his arms, and looking out the window.

When breakfast was done the boys started to make their way outside, but Izumi stopped them in the middle of the hallway.

"Ed, Al, would you two come to the living room with me?" She asked to the boys retreating backs.

They stopped and turned around. They looked at each other worried. Both probably knew what was going to happen.

**Alphonse's POV**

Even though he was the one who said they could trust Teacher, Al was still a little worried.

As they walked in to the small living room just off the hallway, Ed whispered in Al's ear.

"Are you sure, Al? We could run right now." Al looked over his shoulder at his big brother.

"Sure, like I said before, Teacher will understand." Al answered despite his doubts.

Sig followed behind them. Even if they _did_ run, they would have to get past him. It would be easy enough to faze through him but it would take a considerable amount of energy. But Al trusted Teacher and Sig.

The brothers sat on the couch and the adults took the armchairs acrossed from them. Ed was sitting on his hands while Al's were in his lap. Both brothers were nervously shifting in their seats. Neither of them could meet Teacher's fierce gaze.

"So, which one of you two is going to tell me what I have invited into my house?" Teacher's voice was hard but not mad. Both brothers still flinched at her voice though.

Al looked up at Ed but he kept his head down. Al sighed and took a deep breath.

"W-well you see…w-we didn't know this till we were about five or six but…" Al still couldn't look at Teacher. "O-our dad… h-he was a…" He paused shifting again "An angel." Al glanced up at his teacher and her eyes pushed him to keep talking.

"Well, Ed and I are half angels you see, since our mother was human. As it turns out, heaven's angels are forbidden from having kids with humans. Mom said Dad didn't care, he was in love with her." Al started the story. "Our dad had come to kill a demon that was taking human souls and trapping them on earth. Not just any souls though, souls that were meant to become angels when they died. Most angels were made when heaven was made but a few were humans on earth before being an angel. Only the purest of souls became an angel. Our mother was one of them." Just talking about their mother becoming an angel made both boys extremely happy and almost made them rethink the reason they were training in alchemy for.

"The demon chased our mother down one day and our dad saved her. That's how they met. After a while they had us." Al looked over to Ed but his brother was still looking down. "When Ed was born our dad told our mom about angels and what we would become. She didn't mind, actually she said she was very happy that we were her sons, even though I wasn't born at the time." Al looked up at Teacher and both adults looked fascinated at his story.

"Our dad left when I was four and Ed was five. We never knew why until about a year and a half later. At that time we weren't aware of our angel blood. We were playing outside when our wings sprouted, it hurt so much that first time but after that we could grow our wings without any pain." Al paused; both the Elrics were now sitting up and watching the adults.

Izumi was leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and chin on her folded hands. Sig was leaning back in his chair looking up at the ceiling deep in thought. Al continued, a little more confident that they could trust them.

"On that day, our mother explained to us what we were and what our dad was. Since we were young she explained the basics but after we got older she explained more. It turns out that we were supposed to have been killed by higher up angels but our dad prevented that by giving up his wings. Without his wings though, he could no longer be called an angel or return to earth. They let him send a letter to us right after he gave up his wings. Not a normal letter though, it was delivered by another angel disguised as a dove." Al was slightly smiling at Teacher, she was just like a child at story time. She was quite but he could tell she wanted to hear more.

"We flew around the house the weeks after getting our wings; Mother didn't let us fly higher then a few feet off the ground at first. Once she thought we were ready she let us fly outside. Only during moonless nights though, we couldn't let anyone see our wings."

"Is that why you did all you could not to tell us?" This was Teachers first question.

"Yah…our mother said we should never let anyone see us for they probably would call the military and take us away." Ed answered before Al could.

"You two should know that we would never call those…those _dogs _on you two, no matter what it is. You two could be wanted fugitives for all we care. You two are just boys." Ed and Al smiled at her words, knowing she meant them.

Al's face dropped at the next part. "Then mother died. She had a sickness that couldn't be cured." This was the first time they told teacher about how their mother died. "We felt alone when she left. We decided to train harder in alchemy to help people so no one had to lose anybody like we did." Alphonse lied at the last part so they didn't reveal the true reason that they were training so hard. Human transmutation is taboo, and teacher especially doesn't like it for some reason.

Teacher seemed to buy it and looked at them with sad eyes. If she found out about their plain, she would surely beat them till they couldn't move for a week. Al mentally shuttered at the thought.

"We read all our dad's books on alchemy and trained nonstop. After a while we noticed that there is only so much books could teach us so we started to look for a teacher. A few months after we realized this you showed up and helped our town. We knew you had to be our teacher then." Al watched her cheeks turn slightly pink.

"And what we have actually been doing at the lake was flying. Our wings got cramped not flying for almost six months… and we couldn't do it here in town so, we went to the lake every night." Al admitted looking away from Teacher.

"I see now. You two needed to exercise your wings too…" Sig said scratching his chin.

"We also needed to practice our other powers." Ed stated with out thinking.

Once he said it both brothers regretted it. They hadn't planed to tell or show the Curtises anything involving their powers. The two adults looked at the boys, a curious look in their eyes.

"Other powers, like what?" Teacher asked.

"Well…" Ed said nervously "along with our wings we got some…abilities."

"Like what?" Izumi pushed.

The boys looked at each other. Ed shrugged his shoulders and then faced the adults again. Al was a little worried but went along with his brother. They had no clue why they were telling them all of this. They were practically giving away all of their long held secrets.

"Well some of the simpler ones we got when we first got our wings were we can see in the dark no matter how black, we can hear real well too, and we can heal quickly."

"Oh… I see now how your cuts were gone from when you broke the mirror." Teacher said more to herself. "But then why was Ed's wing still hurt even after all your other injuries were healed?"

"Well, it depends on how serious the injury is, how much energy we have, and if we are awake." Ed explained what their mother had told them. "If I was awake it would have healed in minutes, but I would have been exhausted to do so. Healing comes natural to us since we have practiced it for years but I would have had to apply a lot of effort for the broken bone. Al actually healed my wing last night cause I had little energy, and he was ready to pass out after."

"Ok, I got it. Do you have more powers? It sounds like you do." Teacher asked.

"Y-yah… these ones we just got recently." Al said nervously. "Why we were here, actually."

"That's one of the reasons we had to train so hard at night. We had to get a hang of them so that we could control them while training with you. The first few days after gaining them we would struggle to keep them from exploding while training." Ed was trying his best to explain how their powers suddenly popped up out of nowhere and surfaced through out the days that fallowed. "When we tried to master invisibility we had to hide our missing legs and arms all day."

"Invisibility, you two can do that!" she said gaping.

Just to prove his point, Ed disappeared. Both of the adult jumped and yelled in surprise. Ed reappeared with a huge grin on his face. Al was holding back laughter. It took a lot to get that reaction from Teacher _or_ Sig.

"Yes, that is one of them." Al was still trying not to laugh at his teacher's expression. "We can walk through solid objects too, and we can lift about anything lighter then a mountain."

Sig was the first one to shake off the daze and he smiled at the children. "Well, that is quite amazing. I would have never believed that if I didn't see you myself." They knew he was indicating their wings and what Ed just did.

Then teacher came out of the daze. Her face then went suddenly serious.

"Did you use any of your abilities, like the invisibility, to do wrong?" she asked in a stern voice.

"N-no…" His big brother said beside him. "Our mom told us that it was our responsibility not too." This was true, besides a few pranks here and there.

**Ed's POV**

Ed was surprised how easily Teacher and Sig accepted that they were half angels. He had no idea why they were telling them all of this. Maybe it was that they wanted to tell someone about it forever. They talked about telling Winry and Pinako a few times but never did. I guess they would have never told Teacher if she didn't catch them. Ed wasn't even sure what had happened the other day. Their mom did say something about fits when they matured but they never got in to discussing what they were. It could be natural or maybe their bodies were worn down by all the training. Ed just didn't know and it annoyed him.

"Do you think you could show us your wings again? We didn't mess with them much when you were sleeping because they looked like they were giving you pain." Ed was snapped out of his thoughts when Teacher asked this.

Al was setting down the arm chair that Sig was still sitting in. He was demonstrating their strength. Al looked over at Ed with concern in his eyes. They both had known they had seen their wings but they weren't sure if they wanted to give them a better look.

"What do you think Brother?" Al asked walking back over to the couch.

Ed could still fell the small throb where his right wing lay dormant in his back. It was going to hurt when it grew cause it still had a few fractures in the bone. All Al did was align the fracture up last night and Ed had been slowly mending it since he got up.

"Well my wing is still mending and I'm not sure. But we have shown them almost everything else…"

"Where are your wings? How do the come out of your back?" Teacher asked.

"Well, I'm not actually sure." Al said looking down at Ed who was still sitting.

"I don't know either. We can feel them in our body, but they don't seem to take up any space…Like they are there but not." Ed said brows coming together. He never thought of it before.

"Oh," Teacher said noticeably disappointed.

"Why do you want to see them again? I mean we did have them out the whole time we were asleep, that was like three days right?" Al asked tilting his head to the side.

"Actually it was four." Sig corrected him.

"Oh… but why do you want to see them again?"

"Well for one they weren't something you see every day and…well…" Teacher looked away, a slight blush on her cheeks. "They were pretty."

Both boys stared at their teacher. Sig looked like he understood her and nodded. Ed felt a blush on his cheeks too. He knew that his and Al's wings looked cool but never did he think anyone would call them pretty.

"W-well I guess...we could um… show you them…a-again." Ed stuttered. He saw Al was blushing too.

Al moved from Ed's side to a few feet away. They didn't want to crash wings because they were to close to each other. Al's wings were the first to come out. Ed hesitated a second, bracing himself for the pain in his right wing. When his wings finally came out, he winced at the sharp pain and waited for it to subside. When it did he looked up at Teacher and Sig. They were looking in aw at the brothers. Both Ed and Al smiled, they were always proud of their wings. They remember their mother looking at them with pride when ever she saw them, with or without wings.

Ed brought his injured wing it to his lap. Good thing it was the top half that had the fracture of else he wouldn't be able to do that. Now that he had more strength he could fix his wing all the way. He put his hand over the break and forced energy out of his palm. It glowed a soft blue and the pain slowly went away. When he was done he stretched his wing as far as the room allowed and smiled satisfied.

When he looked up, the two adult acrossed from him were looking at him in wonder.

"It is faster to put a hand over it and heal it apposed to focusing on the area that is hurt and heal it." He explained. "If it was in a place I couldn't reach I would have had to focus my energy there and it is much easier to focus it into my hands." He lifted up his hands to show his palms.

"Oh, I see," Sig said unsurely.

Izumi leaned toward Al, who was closer to her, and touched his wing. Al stiffened at the touched and his wing twitched. She drew her hand back imminently.

"Sorry Al, I didn't mean to do that. It's just that they are so soft." She apologized.

"I-its alright, I just haven't had anybody touch my wings since my mother last combed them." Al said smiling. Then both brothers frowned sadly at the thought of their mother and how she used to comb their feather after a bath or just when they asked her too.

"When we landed in mud or got our feathers dirty we had to wash it off before retracting them. It would make us sick or cough what ever was on our wings if we did. Other wise we would never get our wings wet. Water makes our wings heavy and rather uncomfortable. Our mother would comb them so they would dry faster" Al said lost in memory.

"Um… may I touch them?" she asked awkwardly seeing the boys' sadness but just had to feel them again.

"S-sure," Al said stretching his left wing out to her so she could feel them.

"They're so soft and warm!" before she could stop herself she was rubbing the wing on her cheek. She drew back quickly. "I'm so sorry! I couldn't stop myself." She said right away, letting go of Al's wing.

"That's all right," He said his eyes half lidded.

Ed knew that it felt good. Their wings were by far the most sensitive part on their body. Just someone touching them sent tingles up their wings and spine. Like wise, Ed's broken wing hurt ten times a broken leg or arm would. It's both a blessing and a curse.

She kept on petting Al's wing and his eyes grew unfocused. If he was a cat he would be purring right now. He let out a small moan then clamped a hand over his mouth. Teacher looked up at him in surprise. Al lower his had blushing hard. Ed snickered loudly, she turned to him and a devilish smile spread acrossed her face. Ed stopped and frowned.

"Hay, Ed, come over here. I can pet your wings too." She said ushering him to come to her.

"Um, I'm ok." He says nervously.

"Ok then," She gets up and walks over to the couch and sits down to the left of him. "I'll just come over here."

He tried to move over to get out of her reach but his wings reached way past the edge of each side of the couch. The thought never occurred to him to get off the couch or retract his wings so she got a hold of him easily. She grabbed his left wing and started petting it softly. He stopped struggling after the first stroke. He tensed up at first but then his muscles just melted. He tried to keep his composure but the hand petting him wouldn't let up. He heard Al giggling to the right of him.

"Looks like Bother likes it more than I did." Al said still giggling.

Ed's half lidded eyes snapped open. "Shut up!" he growled.

"But it's true." Al said with a wide smile.

"It is not!" Ed yelled and jumped up. His wings fluffed out just like a cat's tail would to make its self bigger in a fight. It was something that both brothers did when angry, but only when their wings were out. Even when flying.

They fought for a while till Teacher yelled at them to stop. Ed sat down on the floor and crossed his arms. Al remained standing up. They stayed like that for a minute until Ed heard Teacher clear her throat. He looked up at her and she started talking.

"I've been actually thinking about this for a while now but…" She said it a firm tone. "I think I've taught you everything I know, and I am very impressed at you two."

Ed sat there and blinked for a moment. Did she just say what he thought she said?

"What?" Is all he could say.

"I'm saying that I have nothing else to teach you." She looked down at him. "You two are real special, it would have taken a normal person about six or more years to get as far as you two have."

"Really?" both Ed and Al said in unison, a smile creeping onto their faces.

"Yep. You can stay here if you want but you have mastered every thing I have to teach you."

As it turns out, before the incident in the bathroom, they were planning to tell teacher they were going home for a while. They felt they had learned everything they needed to bring their mother back, so they didn't need to train any more.

Ed jumped up and so did Al. They yelled in triumph high fiving each other. Ed, forgetting about his wings in the excitement, started to flap them a few times. He sent anything not nailed down against the walls. He stopped once his brother grabbed his wings and held them to his back. Ed blushed and muttered sorry a few times.

"We're going back to Resembool." Al stated to Teacher and Sig.

"Ok, going to go back then." Teacher said straitening her wind swept hair.

"Yah, we miss Winry and Granny Pinako." Al said.

"When are you going to leave?" Sig asked them.

"Oh, I'd say in a few days, after we pack all our stuff." Ed said looking at his brother for agreement.

"Sounds about right," Al replied.

"Ok then," Teacher said.

In no time they were on their way back to the small town on a hill. Although it did feel sudden and out of the blue but they were going back to Resembool. Ed had a clear idea what they were going to do when they got back.

They were going to finally see mom again.

**Next chapter, the mistake that sends them on their journey for the philosopher stone!**

**Hope you like!**

**Ed: ლ(**ಠ**益**ಠ**ლ)**

**Dying Heart Alchemist**


	7. Chapter 7

**So sorry I haven't updated in a while. Long story short I had computer troubles and when I finally got it fixed all my memory was erased including the chapters of this I had already typed up. And also I was just lazy and didn't type up any chapters for a few weeks…**

**Oh! I also got a beta for this story, great huh? You want to introduce yourself Keeper of the Times? **

**B/N: Hey! I'm Kott for short. This is my first time really beta-ing so if there are any spelling and grammar mistakes that's all on me and please review! Reviews feed authors (and sometimes even betas, too. XD) **

**Disclaimer: Since I recently got hit with a copyright strike on my Youtube account, I don't own FMA. **

Heavenly Brothers

Ch.7 Human Transmutation

Water: 35 liters, Carbon: 20 kg., Ammonia: 4 liters, Lime: 1.5 kg, Phosphorus: 800 g., Salt: 250 g., Saltpeter: 100 g., Sulfur: 80 g., Fluorine: 7.5 g., Iron: 5 g., Silicon: 3 g.,

And 15 other elements in small quantities. This is the chemical make up of an average adult human being.

Two half angels studied alchemy since their mother's untimely death. They someday wish to use their knowledge to bring her back.

* * *

><p>"Hurry up, Al!"<p>

"Just a sec, Brother!" The younger one ran up to his older brother with an armful of books. "I had to grab our notes!"

"Ah, right! Forgot!"

"Oh, Ed, you need to settle down." Alphonse lectured.

"I can't, Al, we're finally going to see her again!" Ed didn't have to say who.

The two Elrics had been home for a week now, preparing for what they were about to do. No one knew that they had returned to Resembool, so they had no interruptions in their plans.

Both brothers busied themselves grabbing the required materials needed for the transmutation. Soon a small pile of ingredients was placed in a pan in the middle of the spare room. They walked up to the pile, vigilant to avoid smudging the lines of chalk excruciatingly drawn in an elaborate circle, and stood over it. Ed handed Al a small knife, similar to the one in his own hand.

The brothers theorized that their blood would work as a perfect beacon for their mom's soul and it would help them recreate her body since the DNA would be almost the same. They each cut one of their fingers, letting a few drops fall onto the top of the pile.

Ed went over the array making sure it was perfect. When he deemed it perfect, he turned to his younger brother with a smile spread wide across his face.

"Ready?" He asked.

"Mm-hmm," Al nodded back at him.

"Alright, here we go," Both brothers bent down and put their palms on the outer circle.

The array started to glow a soft blue, then bright gold. Their smiles grew wider as they watched the pile in the middle start to move.

Then, the whole feeling in the room changed, light turned to dark, and energy started to lash out at everything in the room. The lamps smashed, leaving the only light in the room to come from the dark transmutation circle.

"Brother, something's wrong," Al said looking scared.

Then a crack appeared across the circle and opened up. A giant eye blinked open out of it while small black shadow-esque arms scrambled around. The horrific arms started to reach towards the brothers.

"No… a rebound?" Ed couldn't believe the sight before him, they had worked so hard.

"Ed!"

Ed turned to see his little brother arm being grabbed by some of the black hands. When they touched Alphonse, he started to disintegrate.

"Al!" Ed started to reach for his little brother but then immense pain stopped him.

Ed looked around to his left leg and saw tiny, midnight hands grabbing it. Just like Al, his leg was crumbling into nothing.

"Brother, help!" Ed turned back to his brother.

Al's whole body was starting to fall apart in small paper-like strips, then disappearing. The hands pulled Al to the center of the circle to the eye. Ed started to panic. He started to struggle against the arms that had wrapped around him. Ed started to grow his wings and when they were out he tried to flap them to get out of the iron grip. But then the arms restricted his wings too.

Ed was too focused on his brother to notice were the shadow arms touching his wings, black started to spread like ink staining them jet black.

"Al!" He screamed reaching for Al.

"Brother, Brother!" More of Al disappeared rapidly.

Just as Ed's hand was about to grasp Al's, everything went white.

"Wha-…um, what was I just doing?" Ed looked around, "Al?"

One thing he noticed was his wings were gone. He was pretty sure he had had them out before he came here, even though he couldn't remember what exactly he had been doing.

"Hello, there," The voice scared Ed, he looked in front of him to see who had spoken.

The voice he heard sounded like hundreds of people talking all at once. There was a voided, human shape sitting cross legged in front of him. It only contained an outline looking like a cloud of black dots. The only feature on it was a huge mouth plastered in a wide, unnatural grin.

"Who are you?" Ed asked confused.

"Oh! I'm so glad you asked." The thing said, "I am called by many names. I am the world, I am the universe, I am God, I am the Truth, I am one, I am all, but most of all…I am you." At 'you' he pointed to Ed.

He heard something behind him and turned around. There he saw a huge doorway open up and a huge eye stared back at him from the darkness inside.

"You dared to knock on the door, now it's open!" The Truth said, almost gleefully.

Black shadow hands reached out towards him. Ed tried to get away but they grabbed him in a matter of seconds. He was pulled into the black space. He was suspended in the darkness for a few quiet moments before pictures and knowledge started to file into his mind. Ed screamed at the sudden intake of, well, everything. It felt like his head would split in two.

"Stop, stop, STOP IT!" He yelled at whatever was doing this, "It hurts! Stop it!"

Millions of things he would have never known or even think about flashed in front of his eyes. Information unavailable to the average mortal was burned into his mind.

Then, like a light at the end of a long tunnel, his mom appeared.

"Mom!" he reached for her. Just like with Al, he had almost had her hand when he was shoved violently back into the white space.

He said nothing but turned back to the big stone door, which he now knew was called the Gate. Truth watched him intently as Ed walked up to the Gate and slammed both of his fists on it.

"I get it. Our equation wasn't wrong, it just needed something more!" He tuned around to face Truth, "You have to show it to me again! I was almost there!"

The Truth stood up.

"I'm sorry, but I have already showed you all I can with the toll you paid," It said.

"Toll? What toll?" Ed asked.

"This one," Truth took a step forward and a foot started to materialize on its left leg.

At the same time Ed's leg disintegrated. Horrified, he turned back to Truth but Truth was in his face.

"It's an equivalent exchange, right? Al-cha-mist?"

Then he was in the spare room again. Pain racked his body. He griped his left leg and felt a hot liquid under his fingers.

"Damn! This can't be happening! It wasn't… it wasn't supposed to… Damn it all!" he crawled on all fours but for some reason couldn't feel his left leg. He looked back at it.

"No, it's really gone," He cried out after seeing the stump just above his knee. Then he fell to his side landing on his right wing.

"Help! Someone! Mom! Mom…" He looked into the middle of the circle.

Ed saw his mom's dark shape in the mist. Joy overwhelmed him, but died quickly when the mist cleared. His already labored breaths caught in his throat. What ever that thing was…it wasn't his mom.

The thing had no skin and most of its organs were moving around in the spot where the stomach and chest should have been. Two purple eyes stared at him upside down as it took long shuttering breaths. It reached out to him only for the arm to snap off and fall. A puddle of dark blood that almost looked black was forming under it.

"No," he said weakly, "No, this isn't what we wanted!" He looked around for his little brother.

"Al…Alphonse…Alphonse! Alphonse!" He spotted a pile of clothes where his baby brother had once been.

"No, this is my fault… Alphonse!" he yelled his brother's name again as if it would bring him back.

Ed then spotted the old armor their family had had for centuries. Some of the knowledge the gate had given him provided the equation to bind a soul. He crawled towards the armor and tipped it over, making the head fall off.

"Damn it, damn it…" he said as he crawled to the open neck of the armor.

He started to draw a soul array in the blood that covered his fingers.

"Give him back! He's my brother!" He yelled as he drew it. He pulled out when he was done.

"Take my leg! Take my arm! TAKE MY HEART! YOU CAN HAVE IT!" He could feel tears running down his face. "So give him back! He's my only brother!"

He had no idea what made him do it, maybe it was the information from the gate or maybe a new instinct, but he clapped his hands together. A blinding blue light appeared between them.

**Alphonse's POV**

Alphonse came back to awareness in the dark room. The first thing he noticed was that he felt nothing. He waited for all his senses to come back, but after a few minutes when they didn't, he found that he could move but couldn't feel.

As he sat up he noticed that his body was different. Other then the obvious size difference, he heard the creaking of metal. He brought his hand in front of his face and saw the huge glove of a suit of armor.

Al put aside the different body and looked around the room. It was very dark and he could barely see anything. As his eyes roamed to the middle of the transmutation circle he saw something…something not human.

"Don't look, Al…" came the labored, wheezing voice of his brother.

Al turned his head to the part of the room he hadn't looked yet and saw his brother. Ed was panting and clutching his shoulder, but the thing was…there wasn't an arm attached to it.

Blood was flowing freely down the eldest brother's side, forming a puddle underneath him.

"Ed!" Al rushed to his brother's side just in time to catch Ed as he started to fall.

"I gave my arm… to transmute your soul to… that armor," Ed said between pants, "I'm sorry, I… couldn't get your body too."

"What happened? Our equation was perfect. How did it go wrong?" Al asked, if he could cry he would have been already.

"It wasn't the equation,…It was us." Ed said.

Then Alphonse noticed that Ed's leg was also missing. He shifted Ed a little bit so that he was lying in Al's lap. That's when Al saw Ed's wings. It took a second to register in Al's mind that the bulk of black attached to his brother's back were his wings. They were so black that Al hadn't noticed them before in the dark room. They blended in so well.

Al pushed the color change to the back of his mind then he focused on the freely bleeding wounds. He crudely wrapped them up to slow the bleeding.

"I got to get you to Granny's. She'll help," He said as he began to stand.

'Yeah," Ed said hoarsely, "That's probably a good idea, but I still have my wings out, don't I?"

"Yeah, you do," Al said as he ran out the door. He refrained from telling Ed about their new color.

"Let me put them away then," Ed's energy was fading, "after all, I think us coming to their door like this is enough to give them a heart attack, let alone with wings on my back."

"Don't talk too much, Brother, save your strength." Al said as the auto-mail shop came in to view over a hill.

By the time they reached the back door of the shop, Ed had his wings hidden., but he had passed out from the strain of putting them away. Al fell to his knees and held Ed with one arm as he knocked hard with the other. Thankfully, it was still early enough in the night for the lights to be on and for the Rockbells to still be awake.

Behind the door he heard voices talking. The door swung open to show a girl about the same age as the brothers were. Her face had a smile as she opened the door but her face dropped like a rock when she saw Al there with a half dead Ed in his arms.

The door swung all the way open revealing them to the elderly women at the kitchen table. Her face an exact copy of horror as the young girl. The two stared.

"Please, Granny, help my brother!" Al said.

The girl was the first to snap out of her shock. "A-Alphonse? Is that you?" Winry Rockbell asked.

"Yes, but help Brother first then I will explain."

That's when Granny Pinako snapped out of it. She got up and headed into the house and calling after them.

"Bring him over here, and quickly!" She led them to one of the hospital rooms in the other side of the house.

"Set him down on the bed." She said.

Al did as he was told and backed up to the doorway as the two doctors went to work. Winry was shaking badly and Pinako noticed.

"Winry, why don't you go clean Al off while finish up here?"

Winry looked glad to get out of the room were her childhood friend laid unconscious and bleeding. She led Al out of the room and back into the kitchen. She began busying herself by getting water and rags to clean the blood off of him. Al had just noticed how much blood was caked on his front.

Winry silently started to clean his chest plate first. She didn't seem like she wanted to ask any questions so he just stared down the hallway where Ed was.

It was a while later and Al was still watching for any sign that Ed was going to be alright. A small sound came from Winry, Al turned to her. She was looking down and was wringing her hands. She glanced up at him, but when she saw he was looking at her she quickly looked back down.

"Winry?" he asked nervously.

Winry flinched at his voice "I finished cleaning the blood off." She looked like she was going to say some thing else but went with that instead.

Al glanced back to the hallway but returned his gaze to the girl in front of him. She seemed to get up the courage to ask the question she wanted to.

"A-are you really Alphonse?"

"Yes," he said sadly, keeping her gaze.

"W-what happened?"

"We tried to bring our mother back." He said.

Winry looked down. "That's what you two have been doing, isn't it? That's why you've been studying all this time, right? To do this?"

"We didn't think it would turn out like this," Al said echoy voice trembling .

"Why!" Winry's sudden outburst startled Al, "Aren't we enough? Me and Granny?" Winry had tears in her eyes.

"Winry, you and Granny are the best, but you should understand how we feel." He said trying to calm her down but also clenching his fists at the thought of their failure.

Winry wiped her eyes realizing what drove them to try and bring their mother back.

"We were actually going to bring back your parents after we had mom back." He said in a small voice.

"You idiots." She keep her eyes shaded by her bangs but small tears rolled down her cheeks.

Just then Pinako came in. She looked exhausted.

"Ed will be fine. I have stopped the bleeding and gave him some medicine to help regain the blood he lost."

Her face grew hard and she frowned.

"Explain why you came to our door in a suit of armor with you brother bleeding to death." She said in a hard voice.

"We tried human transmutation. We tried to bring Mom back." Al said again.

Pinako's face softened as the heard the regret in his voice.

"I thought that it was forbidden for any alchemist to try and bring back the dead," she said sternly.

"It is, but we just wanted to see her smile again…" His voice started to crack.

"From what I understand, you two are lucky to be alive," Granny said coming up in front of him. "Tell me, Al, what happened?"

He told them the whole story, starting with when Ed first told him they were going to bring their mom back.

"…and what ever it was we made…it wasn't human." He finished up his story.

Both girls were silent until Winry spoke up.

"So… it was Ed's idea…" she said menacingly but still with a shaky voice.

"No, we both agreed and contributed to it." He said holding up his hands in front of him trying to save his brother from a death by wrench when he woke up. "It was both our faults."

"So you lost your body, Alphonse?" Pinako asked.

"Yeah," Al said then took off his helmet to show the empty inside.

Both girls gasped and stared. Winry looked close to tears again and Granny just looked stunned. Even though he did tell them before how he lost his body, seeing it made it more real for them.

**Winry's POV**

Winry was silent for a while. How could those idiots do this? They could have died, both _almost _died! And now Ed was in a coma and Al had no body.

"It's getting late; we should all go to bed." Granny's voice snapped her out of her thoughts.

Indeed it was almost past midnight. Winry sighed and shook her head as if to get rid of the thoughts of her two childhood friends near death experience. But when she opened her eyes and saw Al again they came back. She looked down to her feet not wanting to see Al just a soul in armor. She felt ashamed that she did that and was about to look back up at the youngest Elric when something caught her eye on the floor.

Under the table was a black feather. It was wet from the water she had used to clean Al off. This must have fell off Alphonse's armor because it still had some blood on it. Winry took it to the sink and rinsed it off. After drying it, it didn't get all matted and ugly like most bird feathers would after they got wet. This one seemed to puff out and shine.

She was just entranced by the beauty. She turned around again still looking at the feather. Al must have noticed she had something in her hands.

"What do you have, Winry?" He asked, curious.

"I think this was on you, Al. It still had some…some of E-Ed's blood on it." She shuttered thinking of how Ed looked covered in blood.

"Oh, ahhh…" Al's glowing red eyes seemed to widen when he saw the feather, "Maybe on the way over here a feather stuck to me…"

"Are you going to stay with your brother, Al?" Granny asked before Winry could ponder the feather more.

"Yeah, I think I will. I don't think you need to set up a bed though, I can't feel anything in this body, anyways." Al seemed sad when he told Granny how he couldn't feel any more.

"Oh, alright," Granny said uncertainly, "You call us if something seems wrong with him then."

"O.k." he said.

Then they all went to bed.

**It took me forever to actually type this. It is different from how I first wrote it but I'm satisfied about it.**

**DyingHeartAlchemist**

And it took me twice to beta this because I didn't save the changes the first time.

Keeper of the Times


	8. Chapter 8

**Another chapter! Yippy! **

**I'm not sure when I will update Return though…**

**I kind of been more interested in writing this story than that one. **

**And, I got a NEW KITTEN! I'm so happy I finally got one here at my new house! We used to have tons of cats at our old town in the country but now I live in the city. We were afraid to bring any of those cats because they might run away. Guess what his name is? I'll tell you at the bottom. **

**Hope you enjoy this chapter!**

**Disclaimer: If I owned FMA or any thing associated with it, then why am I writing this?**

Heavenly Brothers

Ch.8 Depression

Everything was black. Cold, endless black. Nothing was out there and nothing ever will.

This is how Ed spent the first few nights in his coma. He was only aware of the guilt he felt and the pain. It was like an eternity for him. He wandered aimlessly in his own thoughts, and one should know that when left to your thoughts for hours on end you may just get depressed. And this young Elric had lots of sad and horrifying thoughts to ponder.

Buy the time Edward saw a small light in the distance; he was already on the edge of self pity. When he finally reached the light, it wasn't the beacon of hope he was looking for. He was hurled into terrifying night terrors.

There their mother was in the garden. Ed ran up to her smiling. He held out his newest creation, a little metal horse. Trisha smiled and praised him for his genius. Ed looked down at his shoes embarrassed, but then the tomatoes his mom was picking fell to the ground. Ed looked up worried. But he was no longer in the garden, he was in that small extra room, and his mother was no longer in front of him. Instead it was the skinless, grotesque form he had made.

"Why didn't you make me right? Why!" It wheezed falling to a bloody, broken pile at his feet.

"Brother!" Ed turned at Alphonse's voice to see black hands pulling him away. Flakes of Al were flying of and vanishing quickly. Then a suit of armor appeared in front of him. Red eyes glared intensely at Ed. Then to voice of his little brother echoed in the empty suit.

"This is all your fault, I HATE YOU!" His voice was lased with anger and his giant gloved hands were clenched in fists at his side.

Ed just stared, horrified. He had done that, him! He had failed to resurrect their mother. And Al paid for it.

Many different scenes like that one played out, and every one of them involved Al and their mother. They ranged from when Trisha Elric died, her turning into…that thing, Al losing his body, and Al blaming him for everything and leaving him.

Ed lived these over and over. Each one worse then the last.

**Alphonse's POV **

Alphonse was starting to get real worried. Ed had been asleep for the past four days, and this last day he has been trashing about in his bed a lot more than he had any other day so far.

The morning after they had tried the transmutation, Pinako had headed over to the brothers' house to check what they had done. She had come back rattled. She briefly said that she had buried the thing they had made, and then she headed up stares to her room and fell asleep. It must have been a real horrible sight to have Granny acting like that.

Now it was the middle of the night and Al was just sitting in the corner of the small room reading a book. Al had figured out that in this body he couldn't sleep, he also couldn't eat either. He was starting to miss those simple things, and to top it off the images of the failed transmutation kept playing in his head. No matter what he did to distract himself his mind would always wander back to what happened.

Al sighed shaking his head trying to rid himself of everything that had happened. Then as he settled back into the book he was reading, Ed bolted upright and yelled out. Al was startled at this sudden movement and just stared at his gasping brother. Ed was awake but he seemed not aware of were he was. He was looking around franticly with unseeing eyes. Al finally snapped out of it and ran to his brother's side.

"Ed, Ed! It's alright." He grabbed his panicking brother by the shoulders but avoiding were his right arm used to be.

Ed's eyes whipped to him, they were full of emotion. Once they spotted him, relief was the one that overwhelmed them all.

"Al?" Ed croaked.

"Yes, it's me Brother." In a matter as seconds, regret had replaced the relief in the eldest Elric's eyes.

Ed turned his head away from him, up to the ceiling and went limp in Al's arms. Al thought that Edward had passed out again but then he saw Ed's eyes open. They had suddenly lost all emotion and were dull compared to their usual color. This scared Al; he had never seen Ed like this.

"Brother?" Al asked uncertainly.

Ed's eyes shifted to look at him. This time Ed didn't turn away, but instead he seemed to just look through him. His eyes were completely blank and hollow, nothing in them at all.

The next thing, Ed closed his eyes and he fell asleep. Al was both relived but sadden that his brother fell asleep peacefully. Relived that he didn't have to see his brother's lifeless eyes, and sadden because he couldn't talk to Ed.

Ed didn't wake up for the rest of the night but he still trashed around more than ever. Al tried but couldn't wake him up from his bad dreams. Winry even came down in the real early morning to see what was wrong with his brother, but she just said that he was totally fine but what his sub-conscience mind was putting him through.

This worried Al even more. Brother had always had real bad dreams, and after what they just experienced they were probably even worse then normal. If Al could have slept, he would more than likely be in the same state as Ed right now.

By the morning though Ed had calm down and was finally sleeping peacefully.

"Has he woken up yet?" Winry had poked her head into the room.

"No," Al responded. Granny had said that since he was dreaming now he should wake up soon.

"Oh," Winry said slowly and went back to the kitchen.

Al sighed, it was nearing noon and Ed hadn't woken up yet, although he did have a ruff night.

He got up and left the room. He didn't want to be in here anymore. He headed outside, looking for some fresh air. Even though he could no longer breathe or smell, just being outside helped. Seeing his home town laid out before him was just calming. Field of different crops lined the hillsides and farm houses were scattered all over the place. This was home, even if something was always missing after mom had died.

Al had no idea how long he stayed out there but a scream from inside the house brought his thoughts back to reality. It sounded like Ed; he must have woken up from another bad dream.

Al rushed inside the house to see what was wrong. As he pushed into the room his brother was in, he heard flapping of wings. Ed was thrashing around like some one was trying to kill him. His wings were going crazy as well. Luckily Winry was in the basement and couldn't hear Ed or else she would have been in here also. Pinako was out shopping so she wasn't here either.

Al slowly advanced, trying not to be hit by Ed's powerful strokes. Ed's wings took up almost all of the space in the small room. His right wing was beating hard against the wall his bed was up against. The pain was probably not registering in his mind or he would have stopped by now. It was leaving some drops of blood smeared on the wall.

Once Al reached his brother he started to shake Ed.

"Brother! Brother! ED!" He yelled trying to snap his brother out of it.

Ed's wings slowly stopped moving and lay still on his back. After a minute Ed seemed to wake up and looked up at him.

"Sorry, Al." He said in a horse voice.

"It's ok, Brother. Are you alright?" Al had no idea what Ed was apologizing about, but he motioned to Ed's wing to show his concern for it. Ed looked lost.

"Is your wing ok? I mean, you were hitting it pretty hard against that wall." Al said. Ed blinked a few times still looking like he had no idea what he was saying.

"I did?" He asked. He moved both wings not looking back at them. He grimaced as his right wing moved. "Ow, how'd I do that?"

"You woke up from a bad dream." Al explained. Ed seamed to falter when he remembered his dreams.

"Right…" Ed said with no emotion, he tilt his head forward so his eyes were hidden.

"Let me try and fix it Brother, you're still too weak to." Al offered.

"Sure," Ed said toneless.

Al made Ed sit on the edge of the bed so he could reach the hurt wing. Once it was in his hands, Al focused all of his energy into his palms. Al was relieved that in this body he could still use his healing ability. He had tried everyone on the first night, the things he could not do was grow his wings, faze threw things, or go invisible. Most of them made sense why he couldn't do them since he didn't have a real body anymore. He just wondered if Ed had lost some of his powers too.

Ed kept his head down the whole time. That was, till he caught sight of the tip of one of his wings. His head jerked up to look at his now black wings.

"Wha- why are my wings black?" He asked surprised.

"I don't know. They were like that after the transmutation." Al was done healing the wing so he lowered his arms.

"I don't…oh," Ed seemed to realize something. "I think it's because of what I did." Ed lower his head again and spoke in that toneless voice.

"What?" Al didn't understand.

"I tried to play god and my wings turned black." Ed seemed curtain. He then looked up into Al's eyes, his face serious. "What about you?" then his face softened, sad, "What about your wings? Are they still white?"

**Ed POV**

Ed almost didn't want to hear the answer. Ed knew he deserved everything that has happened to him, especially his beautiful wings turning dark. But Al…Al didn't deserve any of these things that happened to him. Al didn't deserve a brother so useless and naïve.

Ed just hoped his brother's wings weren't marked as his was.

"Sorry, Brother, but I don't know. I can't grow them in this body." Al's words made Ed's heart sink lower than ever before.

"W-wh-at?" Ed said shakily. "You c-can't grow y-your wings a-anymore?"

"No," Al answered. Ed could tell how sad Al was, even with him in that armor..

Ed's guilt tripled. He had taken away one of the best things about being an angel, flying.

"Al, I'm sorry," he gripped the sheets with his only hand left, "I-"

Just then footsteps could be heard coming down the hall. Ed wasn't in the mood to explain anything involving what they were, so he quickly withdrew his stained wings.

Winry walked in the door a few seconds later. She caught sight of Ed awake and stopped. Ed just stared at her with mud colored eyes.

Before anyone could blink, a wrench was in Ed's head. He fell backwards on the bed twitching.

**Winry's POV**

"You idiot! How dare you do that! You two almost lost your lives! Look what happened to you guys! Do you think Granny and I_ liked_ you coming to our door half dead and Al not in a body, huh?" She was crying now.

"Your right, I am the worst." Ed said sitting back up but looking away hiding his eyes.

This was not what Winry expected. She lowered her wrench; she was in utter disbelief. She thought Ed would defend himself, not just agree with her.

"Um, look Ed. I didn't mean all of that-" Ed cut her off.

"But it's all true. It's all true." The last part he said in a whisper. He was stating to shake and a tear rolled down his cheek.

This startled the others in the room. Ed never cried, never. Not since he and Al watched their mother die in their hands. Not even at her funeral.

"Ed," Winry came and sat on the bed right beside him. She put a hand on his back to comfort him. For some reason her hand started to tingle but she ignored it.

Tears were flowing freely down his cheeks now and every once in a while he made a small sound. He seemed to be trying to hold back his cries. Winry didn't know how he could hold out like that, but Ed had always hated showing people his weaker side, even to his brother.

Ed calmed down soon and the tears stopped. Winry still felt awkward having seen her childhood friend, who was always the pillar of strength for her and Alphonse, break down like that.

Ed then grew silent and still, barley moving a muscle. This silence went on for quite a while. Neither of Ed's friends dared break it, and Ed seemed to be lost somewhere in his own mind. Soon Winry couldn't take it any more.

"I bet you're hungry, Ed. I'll go and get you something to eat." Ed didn't move or even acknowledge her. Seeing Ed's lack of response, Al answered for him.

"Yeah, that's a good idea." He said.

Winry nodded slowly and left the room. As she left she threw Ed a worried glance. Once she made it to the kitchen tears started to role down her face. She had refused to cry and be strong for Edward, but she couldn't hold back anymore. She let them fall as he made some chicken noodle soup, careful not to let any get into the soup. Even though it probably didn't matter if a tear or two fell in, she still tried her best to keep them out of the food.

"Winry, are you ok?" Winry jumped at the unexpected voice behind her. She quickly wiped away her tears and turned around.

"What are you talking about, Al? I'm perfectly fine." She said in the most cheerful voice she could muster.

"It's alright Winry. You don't need to be strong for us." Al voice started to shake. She knew he was close to tears too, even if he couldn't cry anymore.

"But, you and Ed were always there for me. You always were strong for me." Stray drops fell from her eyes and she quickly wiped them away again. "Besides, you see how he's acting. He needs some one strong more then ever, you do too Al. And Granny and I are the only ones that can fill that role now."

Al had been locked up in that room with Ed the whole time Ed was out. He had rarely left the small hospital room, and when he did, it was only to the other parts of the house for a few minutes or to the front yard for a little while. He had always returned to the room in less then a half an hour. And when he talked, which had become increasingly rare, it was always in a small voice. Winry could tell he was constantly trying to hold his voice steady because it wavered every once in a while. It was sad to see Al like that, and what she had just seen of Ed was a lot worse.

Al remained silent and helped her get the rest of Ed's lunch. When they brought the tray in to Edward, he was in the same spot on the edge of the bed he was before. He didn't even look up when they pulled a small roll-able table in front of him and set the soup on it. He didn't even move till Al spoke up.

"Please, Brother, you need to eat." Al pleaded.

Then he finally looked up at the tray of food. Slowly he reached for the spoon and started to eat. His left hand was shaky and uncoordinated and he only ate half the bowl. He just set the spoon down and refused to eat any more no matter how much they both tried to get him to.

As she took the tray of food to the kitchen she noticed some thing that she hadn't before. Half of the milk was gone from its glass and she had even seen Ed drink it. He never did that with out lots of bickering and threats with her wrench for him to actually drink a sip of milk.

Ok, now she was worried more then ever about the usually hot headed blond.

**I think that was the only way to show how messed up Ed was after he failed to bring back his mom. I mean, seriously! Would Ed ever _willingly_ drink milk?**

**I thought not…**

**AND, I found a great person that comes close to how I imagine Ed and Al's wings to look like. I know at least some of you people have watched X-men 3 The Last Stand (I just re-watched it for the first time in like forever) and the mutant who I think is called Angel has wings that pretty much match up with how I see the brother's. Well, only Ed now (I'm so sorry Alphonse!) and they are black now…**

**Also, my little blue elephant that sits by me when I write wants to thank every one who has reviewed, AND he will personally visit, in their dreams, anyone who failed to click the small little button marked "Review". **

**I will not up date till I have at least five more reviews!**

**And the kittens name is Edward. Ring any bells?**

**DyingHeartAlchemist**


	9. Chapter 9

**Sorry about all the Point of View changes in this chapter but I felt it is necessary.**

**Disclaimer: Well, like most of the fangirls and/or fanboys on this sight, I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist and more then likely never will…**

'_This is thoughts'_

**ajnin a er'uoy **

**siht daer nac uoy fI **

Heavenly Brothers

Ch.9 Military Men

The military was always looking for new recruits and Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang was at the brunt of it today. He was currently looking over reports for any alchemists mentioned in them. The reports were from all over Amestris: they were full of information people had gathered about talented people the military might be interested in. His assigned job, for now, is to find a few new alchemists for the military.

To say the least, Roy was bored. Was the East becoming so quiet that the only job worthwhile they could assign is to read through piles of piles of paperwork for a hint of talent mentioned in these half-assed reports? Most of the missions, that reports are on, are dull and uninteresting. He was falling asleep just reading about how this soldier had to check on a disturbance in bakery. Dull, dull, dull, dull, and dull.

Roy put down the report after finding nothing of importance. He closed his eyes and started to rub his temples. Couldn't someone have gone through these reports before they gave it to him? Half of these supposed 'talented alchemist' are just amateurs at best. The last report was just some one who just super heated the bread dough to cook it in a few seconds, even a child could do that, nothing special there.

"Sir, do you have a headache?" A stern female voice asked behind him.

"No, it's just that there is nothing useful in these reports. Agh! Why do I have to scout for alchemists? I mean if they want to join the military they can take the exam without someone asking them if they want to, and if they're too busy to find out how to take the test then it's their own damn fault!" Roy was getting a little irritable…or maybe a lot.

"I guess some need persuasion to join, Sir." 2nd Lt. Riza Hawkeye relied without missing a beat.

"Well even so," He stood up from his chair. "I'm going for a walk." He really wanted to get away from his paperwork but before he could move another muscle he heard a gun being cocked.

"I'm sorry, Sir, but you just got back from lunch twenty minutes ago." With out moving anything but his eyes he looked at the clock. He was sure it was hours ago he went to lunch, but Hawkeye's words rang true. He slowly sat back down so not to give her any reason to shot him. He let out his breath once he heard the gun un-cock.

"You should just pick one to look into, Sir. So you can take time to go to see them and investigate." Though she never really gave the Colonel advice on how to slack off, even she found it boring reading some of these reports.

"Wait," he looked up surprised, "I actually get to go and find the alchemist in the reports? Why didn't you tell me, like two days ago?"

"Sir, if you actually read the assignment you would have known." She said not looking up from her own paperwork.

Roy seemed to regain his energy trying to find the report that could get him away from work at least a few days. He had to find one or two worth while because he had to approve the trip with his higher ups. If it was someone that seemed useless they wouldn't let them go. As in them, that meant him and Riza.

Needless to say he found a few to investigate by the end of the day. They were out of East City by the next day.

"Well, I'd say he didn't want to join." Roy was rubbing his nose where the door was slammed in his face.

"He seemed fine till we asked if he was interested in being a state alchemist." Riza said thoughtfully.

Roy chuckled, "This is why I didn't like this mission to begin with. It's going to be hard to convince anyone to join the military as a state alchemist. People don't call soldiers 'the dogs of the military' for nothing, you know."

"Yes, Sir." Riza knew exactly what he meant, not many people liked the military.

"Now that leaves those small town alchemists. I guess they're brothers too. This says that they rebuilt an entire barn with alchemy like it was nothing, but it probably won't be worth the trip," Roy said shrugging his shoulders.

"Well then if you want, we could head back to headquarters, Sir." Riza commented.

"No, no, I think we can check them out. It is just in the next town over. What's it called again, Resembool?" Roy really just wanted to stay away from his paperwork a little while longer. Hawkeye knew this but still followed orders.

Soon they were driving down a small dirt road in a horse pulled wagon.

"I apologize for the bumpy ride," The old soldier driving said, "but here in the countryside automobiles are rare, indeed." The two officers have been riding the train and finding local transport through out the whole trip.

"It's alright. It has its own charm." Roy replayed.

"So what brings you to the Elrics' house, Lt. Colonel Mustang?" The man asked from were he held the rains to the horse.

"I've heard reports of two brothers with a gift for alchemy so I come to meet them myself." He replied smoothly.

"I see. Scouting for new state alchemist are you?" The man smiled and nodded his head in understanding. "But to send an officer from all the way from East HQ?"

"Finding and recruiting talented alchemists is part of my job." He said after Riza shot him a look telling him not to agree with the man. "To be honest, with all the losers we've taken in the civil war, we need all the new recruits we can get."

"I just can't wait to see the look on those kids' faces," the driver chuckled, "when they see such a high ranking officer standing at their door."

The Colonel froze at those words. "Did you just say…kids?"

"Yes, sir," The man said a little confused.

The Lt. Colonel grabbed the report about the brothers and read what it said. "It says right here…Resembool Village, Edward Elric, 31 years old…"

"No sir, he's eleven, and his brother's a year younger." The enlisted man corrected him.

"What is the meaning of this, 2nd Lt. Hawkeye?" He asked still looking over the report.

"Ether this document came through a time vortex, or someone made a mistake." She replied calmly in her monotone voice.

The man started to chuckle again, like he knew a joke neither of the officer did. "Just wait until you meet them, and then make your decision." He said cheerfully.

Roy remained quiet. At least it got him off real work for another hour.

Just then, they pulled up to a small white house with the address that they had. Apparently there was at least one promising alchemist that lived here. Roy stepped off and Riza followed. He went up the small stone steps to the door.

The Lt. Colonel went to knock but as soon as his knuckles hit the wood of the door it swung open freely. He glanced over to his Lieutenant just as she was glancing at him. Their eyes met and she reached for her hip laying her hand on the butt of her gun ready to pull it out as soon as it was needed. Mustang had his fingers in front or him ready to snap. They proceeded into the hall.

"Hello?" Roy called, no answer, "Hello, is anyone here?" again no answer. The two military officials took this as a sign to investigate the house. The Driver told them he'd check the back of the house.

They followed the hall to the first doorway. Roy looked around the corner into a dark living room. He scanned the room then whipped around the corner preparing to snap if anyone popped out. Still seeing no one, he flipped the light switch behind him on the wall. Once he could see everything properly he found that the room was indeed empty other then the old furniture. This happened with the other rooms they searched which included a bathroom, a small closet, and the basement: although the basement did contain lots of various chemicals and materials which was no surprise to find in an alchemist's house.

When they got to the stairs leading to the second floor they split up.

"You go up the stairs and I'll take the rest of down here." He said. Riza gave him a quick nod and headed up the stairs calling to see if anyone was up there.

Roy headed further down the hall. There was only three doors down this way, two on one wall and one on the opposite. He headed to the lone one, but it was nothing other than a closet full of mops, brooms, and cleaning chemicals. Next he turned to the first door behind him. He found a study on the other side of the door. Lots of light flooded in through the window above one shelf of books. The room was covered in a layer of dust except a few spots were you can see a few books have been recently removed. Thinking back he noticed a lot of the house looked untouched. What could have happened? Was this the right house?

He left the room and moved to the last door. He heard the Lieutenant yell that no one was up stairs and heard her foot steps coming down the stairs. He told her were he was and opened the door as she walked toward him.

The room was dark, and the light from the hallway just lit up a section of the floor. Roy froze. There was a transmutation in the middle of the floor, though he couldn't see most of it. There was a lot of dried blood in the middle. He felt dread fill him even before the lieutenant reached his side. He recognized that circle from after the war when he was desperate to right the wrong he had done.

"Sir?" Riza saw how oddly her commanding officer was acting and knew something was wrong.

"There's no one in the back…Maybe they…" the man came up behind them.

"Where are they?"

"Huh?" the man looked very lost at the Colonels harsh voice.

"Wh-Where are the Elric brothers?" He demanded, not moving his eyes from the circle.

"Well… as I was saying, if they aren't here, they're probably at the Rockbell's house."

In the dark, no one noticed the black feathers that littered the floor.

**Winry's POV**

It has been over a month now since Edward and Alphonse showed up after they tried human transmutation. Winry still woke up with nightmares of the brothers dead just like her parents. Although it seems Ed wakes up more then she does because of night terrors, but that seems like it's the only reaction that anything gets out of Ed these days. Even Alphonse has secluded himself, although he makes an effort to answer to her and Granny. Ed just stares blankly and doesn't even twitch at anything. _'Edward, Alphonse, I'm so sorry I can't help you more.'_

This morning was no different. As she helped Grandma with the morning chores she peeked into the living room were Ed and Alphonse were. Both where in the corner, Ed was in a wheelchair and Alphonse was holding the handles that were used to push it. They had a sad aura around them and neither saw her looking at them in the doorway, even though they were looking right at her. It was pain full to watch both her childhood friends acting like this.

She was just about to walk in and tell them that breakfast was ready, even though Al didn't need to eat any more, when there was a forceful knock at the door. Winry turned around to get it when Granny Pinako waved her hand silently telling her that she would get it. Winry nodded and went to set the table, putting off talking to the boys because she knew it would take at least ten minutes to get even _Alphonse's_ attention. She mentally sighed, hoping that her friends will get better soon.

As she just reached the cupboard to grab the plates she heard her grandmother answering the door.

"Be quiet, Den. Don't bark at our guests-Wha- hey you! What are soldiers busting in here for?!"

Winry ran to the hallway to see who it was. Just as she stepped in the hall a man with black hair and eyes to match pushed her aside. She stumbled back a little but righted herself as a young looking woman chased after the other intruder. Both of the Rockbells followed them, she stayed quiet but her grandma was yelling at them to get out.

The man, who she just notice was wearing military clothes, seemed to be looking for something. The lady, who was also in a military uniform, was trying to explain why they were here but Winry was too focused on the man to pay attention. As they were just about to go into the living room, Winry heard a part of what the military lady was saying.

"… where the Elric Brothers…"

Winry tried to hear what she said next but by that time they were already in the living room were Ed and Al where. She only got a glimpse of the brothers in the exact same place they were before cause the man stormed up to them and grabbed Edward by his shirt collar. Ed seemed mildly surprised that someone was actually doing that to him but his eyes still stayed the fogged mud color they have been for the last month. Winry couldn't tell if he was actually registering what is happening.

"We went to your house. What was that over there? What did you make? _What did you do_?"

**Edward's POV**

He had no idea how long it had been since they tried to bring their mom back. It could have been days, months, years, but he didn't really care. All he could think of was how he fucked up and how his brother had paid for his mistake. He was unaware when Winry would beg him to eat, he couldn't taste anything anyways, he only ever ate when ever Al's voice told him to. That cold, echo-y voice that his brother now had was the only tie he had to the world, anything else was lost.

So when he felt someone roughly grab him by the front of his shirt he was snapped out of his self-pity and loathing. The sight that met him was a man he didn't know or remember. He only had a second to wonder who this was before the man asked him a question that he had been repeating to himself over and over.

"_What did you do_?_" _ Ed knew the man said something before that but he only caught that part.

'_Why did I do that? Why did I risk that much for what I got? Why? Why? WHY? Alphonse, it's my entire fault. All my fault!' _He looked down at the man's stomach, not wanting to meet his eyes any more. That's when he saw a gloved hand lightly grip the man's arm that was holding him up.

"I'm sorry, please forgive us, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, we didn't mean for it to happen, I…, we…" It was his little brother's voice.

'_No, Al, don't apologize, it was my fault, not yours. Tell him, tell him, it was me, let him punish me and not you.' _Ed said desperately in his head, wanting to say the words but he just couldn't vocalize them.

The man let him down back into the wheelchair he just realized he must have been in, in the first place. But again he didn't really care so he just kept looking down. He heard the man's voice again.

"You're," the man seemed surprised "That armor's empty isn't it? Please can someone explain what happened?"

"And my I ask what will you do to these boys if I do. I have heard that what they might have done is illegal, will you take them away if you find them guilty?" She was very careful not to say if Al and he tried human transmutation or not.

'_Just tell them I did it, leave Alphonse out of it and let me rot in their prison.'_ Again Ed couldn't find the will in him to talk.

"I swear on my name that I will not turn them in, if they tried human transmutation or not. I just have to know, although just looking at him and his brother I can tell. Please I just want to help." The man's voice was softening a little bit.

"I can't say I totally trust you, but I guess if I don't answer I will probably get arrested, knowing you military dogs." Pinako said " follow me, you too, Alphonse. Bring your brother, and, Winry, get our guests some tea." At that Ed felt himself moving and saw the floor move from under him. This was the most awake and out of his own thoughts he had been in what felt like forever.

**Roy's POV**

Roy knew once he saw how the two boys acted when he asked what they did that neither of them thought that what they did would have turned out the way that it did, and both of them are truly sorry. Roy had no intention from the start to turn them in; he just wanted to help them recover. He knew if he didn't have Maes to help him through the time after the war, he would probably not be here.

He sat down at a small table with the old lady who addressed herself as Pinako Rockbell across from him and the two boys on the right of him. The one in the armor was still holding the back of the wheelchair not sitting down as the other was just in the wheelchair eyes still a little foggy. He had told the 2nd Lt. to stay in the living room and the old lady told that young girl to go make some tea for them so it was just them.

He started talking once every one seemed comfortable.

"This is a surprise. I heard there was a brilliant alchemist here, so I came to see him, but I never imagined a child like this could ever perform human transmutation, as imperfect as it was," He looked at the dead eyed boy, then to the armor, "and even bound a soul."

He looked back at Pinako. "He is more then qualified to become a State Alchemist." The old woman's face seemed to become more wrinkled as he said that but she said nothing, so he continued. "Once he becomes a State Alchemist, he will serve as a soldier, in the case of an emergency, but at the same time he will receive special privileges, and research of the highest level will become possible for him." He looked towards the two boys again and voiced a thought he hoped would motivate both of them to stop sulking. "They might even find a way to get their body's back, or-" then Mrs. Rockbell tapped her pipe in the ash tray cutting him off.

"After he came stumbling in here, covered in blood, I went over to their house. What was there-" She paused as her face scrunched up even more, "What was there wasn't even human! Was it alchemy that created that hideous thing?! I'm against it! Would you have these boys go through hell again?"

**Riza's POV**

The colonel told her to wait out here for him and she did not question it. She knew that he had his reasons and seeing how Mrs. Rockbell felt about the military it was understandable that the Colonel felt that having her in the room too might have made the old lady less corporative. As she sat there she didn't hear the young Ms. Rockbell approach.

"Here you are." The voice made her jump a little. The girl had a tray of tea held out in front of her.

"Thanks." The Lt. said as she grabbed a cup. The girl sat down beside her, knowing that it was best not to disturb the conversation in the other room.

'_Smart girl,' _she thought.

The girl was quiet for a second then turned to her but didn't meet her eyes. "Um, Lieutenant…?"

"You can call me Riza. Riza Hawkeye. Nice to meet you." Riza reached out her hand to shake with the young girl but the girl just looked down at the tray in her hands ignoring the gesture. Riza was a little confused at this but guessed that this family must not like soldiers or the military much.

"Miss Riza, have you ever shot anyone before?" He question had a hint of sadness in it.

"Yes," She decided she couldn't lie; she made that decision when she became a soldier.

"I hate soldiers. My mother and father were taken away to the battlefield, and they were killed there." She said the lowered her head to hide her eyes in the shadow of her bangs, "and now, you're trying to take Ed and Al away too."

Riza just answer with the truth. "It's up to them to decide whether or not they will go." The girl looked up surprised at her, "Yes, they will decide for themselves. Whether to move forward or whether to stay still. The boys will be the ones to decide."

**Roy's POV**

He had been talking to Mrs. Pinako for a while now so he decided to try talking to the boy.

"I'm not forcing you. I'm just offering you the possibility. Will you end your days in despair, or will you seek the possibilities and bow to the military?" He paused to stand up then continued. "If the possibility is there, you should move forward, in order to get your bodies back. Even if the way ahead is through a river of mud." Then he turned to Mrs. Pinako and bowed thanking her for her hospitality. Then walked out of the room.

**Riza's POV**

The girl seemed to understand; again she looked down at the tray. "Miss Riza, why did you become a soldier?"

Riza couldn't help a small smile as she thought of the reason. "Because there is someone I have to protect.

Just then the Lt. Colonel came out of the room so she stood up and started to walk towards him.

"We're leaving." He said.

"Yes, sir." She replied right away.

They left the house and the young miss followed.

"Well, goodbye, young lady." She said as she turned to her at the bottom of the front steps. The girl reached out her hand but kept her eyes on the ground.

"It's Winry." She said.

"Okay, Winry." She smiled and took her hand. "I hope we'll meet again."

Then she and the Lt. Colonel got in the car and drove away. She could see the Winry, Mrs. Pinako, and the younger Elric watching them leave.

"Will they be coming?" she asked him.

"Yes they will." He said with out a hint of doubt in his voice.

"That boy had a spiritless look in his eye." She said voicing how uncertain she was.

The Colonel just smirked at that. "You think so?" His smirk grew even more as he thought back to the boy. "Those…were eyes that had flame in them."

**Another late nighter writing this… Oh well, I'm not tired! Not tired at al-ZZZZZ ZZZZZ…cookies…ZZZZZZZZ**

**(Suddenly wakes up) Oh and if anyone can tell me what that gibberish is up at the top I give you a virtual muffin! **

**Dying Heart Alchemist**


End file.
